Latest / Sid & Friends In The Morning / Charlie Gasparino | Economic Journalist Says White House May Impose "Limited Safeguards" on A.I.
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I got to talk to Charlie Gasparino. He's just really smart.
- 0:03Speaker 1: And every time I put the TV on, it's about AI. Now,
- 0:06Speaker 1: I know a little bit about AI.
- 0:07Speaker 2: Not enough.
- 0:08Speaker 1: But Charlie does. So the first question is very simple, Charlie.
- 0:13Speaker 1: President Trump says... Calm down. Don't listen to all these
- 0:17Speaker 1: crazy people. The fact is we need to beat China.
- 0:20Speaker 2: Let's move forward.
- 0:22Speaker 1: But then you get people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk.
- 0:24Speaker 1: They go, we got to slow down. We need some
- 0:27Speaker 1: guardrails here. Bill Gates is ready to put in a
- 0:30Speaker 1: billion dollars. So what's the truth? Is AI going to
- 0:34Speaker 1: mean the end of the world? Or in President Trump's case,
- 0:37Speaker 1: does it mean the future of the world?
- 0:40Speaker 2: Which one?
- 0:40Speaker 3: Well, you know, this is kind of like one of
- 0:42Speaker 3: those Catch-22 situations, Sid. I mean, I think if you're
- 0:46Speaker 3: a policymaker like the President of the United States, you
- 0:49Speaker 3: cannot stop the advancement of AI. It's too much of
- 0:52Speaker 3: a valuable technology just for national security reasons. Right? The
- 0:58Speaker 3: President's main job is is to protect the national security
- 1:01Speaker 3: of America, right? I mean, if you really think of it,
- 1:04Speaker 3: what is at bottom? And some of that involves protecting
- 1:07Speaker 3: the economy as well. But at bottom, it's to keep
- 1:10Speaker 3: Americans safe. If we're not the leaders in AI, China
- 1:15Speaker 3: takes over, and then God knows what they will do
- 1:19Speaker 3: with this technology, because this is a revolutionary technology. AI
- 1:23Speaker 3: does have a mind of itself. I mean, we've You've
- 1:27Speaker 3: already seen it with the recent anthropic hack that went down,
- 1:32Speaker 3: where the sort of AI bots just... You know, if
- 1:36Speaker 3: you do a deep dive into that, these things were
- 1:39Speaker 3: actually sentient. They were talking to each other. They were
- 1:42Speaker 3: hanged out. They were, hey, let's do this, let's do that.
- 1:46Speaker 3: They were thinking, like, is what we're doing legal, you know,
- 1:50Speaker 3: or ethical? I mean, these things had brains in this
- 1:54Speaker 3: weird way. So... this is, I mean, obviously there's, there's
- 2:00Speaker 3: issues here. Um, but you can't stop it because if
- 2:03Speaker 3: you stop it, the, the, that sort of, um, potential
- 2:08Speaker 3: apocalyptic outcome could be harnessed by the Chinese. Right. We'll
- 2:13Speaker 3: use it.
- 2:13Speaker 2: Right.
- 2:14Speaker 1: China, and they'll use it for bad things like Iran
- 2:16Speaker 1: or the nuclear weapon. But my, my favorite part of
- 2:19Speaker 1: the movie Philadelphia, which was a great movie was, um,
- 2:22Speaker 1: People knew very little about AIDS, and Tom Hanks played
- 2:24Speaker 1: this attorney, and you know the whole movie. And they
- 2:27Speaker 1: were suing, Tom Hanks was suing his company because they
- 2:30Speaker 1: fired him as an attorney.
- 2:31Speaker 2: Because he had AIDS.
- 2:33Speaker 1: And Denzel Washington played the lawyer, and he said, listen,
- 2:36Speaker 1: I don't know much about AIDS, so talk to me
- 2:39Speaker 1: like I'm a first grader. And I'm admitting ignorance here,
- 2:43Speaker 1: so Charlie, talk to me like I'm a first grader.
- 2:46Speaker 1: If all these critics are right, and AI needs to
- 2:49Speaker 1: be slowed down, What is the worst thing that could
- 2:52Speaker 1: happen if, in fact, we accelerate AI?
- 2:55Speaker 2: The world comes to an end? What's the worst thing?
- 2:57Speaker 3: You know, if you believe the potential of AI... That
- 3:04Speaker 3: is not a totally theoretical risk while the world comes
- 3:08Speaker 3: to an end. Not totally theoretical. That doesn't mean it's
- 3:11Speaker 3: worth taking the risk of non-development and non-advancement and non-hegemonic
- 3:16Speaker 3: of the technology because the outcome, the cure might be
- 3:22Speaker 3: worse than the disease, which it really will be because
- 3:24Speaker 3: China will do that. and they will use it for
- 3:26Speaker 3: their own nefarious means, which is them taking over, controlling
- 3:31Speaker 3: the global economy, however they want to do it. I mean, theoretically,
- 3:35Speaker 3: if a bad actor got, you know, the most advanced AI,
- 3:38Speaker 3: they could shut down the electric power grid for the
- 3:41Speaker 3: entire country.
- 3:43Speaker 1: But hold on, as far as I know, as far
- 3:45Speaker 1: as I know, and I know a lot of stuff,
- 3:47Speaker 1: China could already do that already, the water systems, the.
- 3:49Speaker 2: Power, all of that.
- 3:51Speaker 3: Well, it's more difficult now. I mean, you know, and
- 3:53Speaker 3: with AI would be a lot easier and a lot
- 3:55Speaker 3: more instantaneous and a lot more seamless. And, you know,
- 3:59Speaker 3: the fact that when you develop AI, you develop guardrails
- 4:03Speaker 3: against those attacks. That's what people are not considering here.
- 4:07Speaker 3: If we become the leader in AI, we keep moving.
- 4:11Speaker 3: And obviously, if these companies respond to the legitimate concerns
- 4:17Speaker 3: that are out there that we don't want them to stop,
- 4:19Speaker 3: but we want them to put safeguards and basically create
- 4:23Speaker 3: AI that maybe helps prevent that, well, that is a
- 4:27Speaker 3: good thing. And that's where we probably should be going.
- 4:29Speaker 3: And I think that's where the Trump administration is going.
- 4:30Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw my piece in The
- 4:32Speaker 3: Post today.
- 4:33Speaker 1: I did.
- 4:33Speaker 3: It's not like the Trump administration said there's no problems here.
- 4:37Speaker 3: I mean, that's clearly not the case. They understand there's problems.
- 4:40Speaker 3: They would like self-regulation. They also understand that there's this
- 4:44Speaker 3: sort of economic issue here where these AI companies go
- 4:47Speaker 3: into rural communities in particular. They use all the oil
- 4:50Speaker 3: and all the energy, their energy infrastructure, use their water.
- 4:55Speaker 3: And the economic benefits to the community, because it's so rural,
- 4:58Speaker 3: are negligible. So it doesn't sort of match what they
- 5:02Speaker 3: take out. I mean, you could see something along the
- 5:05Speaker 3: lines of the Trump administration and say, hey, if you go,
- 5:07Speaker 3: if you're an AI company, you want to set up
- 5:09Speaker 3: the data center somewhere, you have to essentially create your
- 5:13Speaker 3: own power grid. You have to reuse your water. I mean,
- 5:16Speaker 3: that's the sort of stuff I think they'll do. And
- 5:18Speaker 3: I think they'll like, we will have a debate about,
- 5:21Speaker 3: you know, the sort of downside of AI, but make
- 5:24Speaker 3: no mistake about it. If we don't develop it, they will.
- 5:28Speaker 1: Right.
- 5:29Speaker 3: If we don't develop it and we don't develop the
- 5:32Speaker 3: safeguards that AI could provide. So you don't have a
- 5:36Speaker 3: situation where these bots sort of break out of their,
- 5:39Speaker 3: their womb, so to speak.
- 5:41Speaker 1: Right.
- 5:41Speaker 3: And then just go and hack into a data center, a,
- 5:46Speaker 3: cause that's, basically what happened with this latest anthropic thing.
- 5:50Speaker 3: I mean, this is, look it up, Hugging Tree, I
- 5:52Speaker 3: think it's called.
- 5:53Speaker 2: I can't remember the name of it.
- 5:55Speaker 3: But if you look at that thing, when I did
- 5:57Speaker 3: a deep dive into that, I was.
- 5:59Speaker 2: Like, whoa.
- 6:01Speaker 1: That's why Dario Amadeo came out.
- 6:03Speaker 2: He's scared to death. I mean, Sam.
- 6:06Speaker 3: Now, here's the other thing here that I'm a little,
- 6:10Speaker 3: let's say, skeptical of him being so scared. These are two,
- 6:13Speaker 3: Dario Amadide and Sam Albin run the two major AI companies.
- 6:18Speaker 3: The one with Elon, SpaceX is a sort of hybrid
- 6:21Speaker 3: AI company, right? So all these companies would love what's
- 6:25Speaker 3: known as regulatory capture. That's when the federal government says, okay,
- 6:30Speaker 3: we're going to set up these barriers. These guys are
- 6:33Speaker 3: already in. They got their financing. They're building up their networks.
- 6:37Speaker 3: That means nobody else comes in. So essentially, they have
- 6:40Speaker 3: a head start on everybody. And they're basically protected because
- 6:46Speaker 3: the regulation is preventing competition. So remember that. That's a
- 6:50Speaker 3: little bit at play. I can tell you the Trump administration,
- 6:52Speaker 3: and it's pretty apparent that they've actually said it. And
- 6:56Speaker 3: David Sachs said it over the weekend, who was the
- 7:00Speaker 3: AI czar. Now he has the presence here on this.
- 7:02Speaker 3: He's a pretty smart venture capitalist and futurist. You know,
- 7:08Speaker 3: they want their sort of power on this market, too.
- 7:12Speaker 3: He believes I do, too. So I don't really buy
- 7:16Speaker 3: their sort of skepticism totally. But, you know, listen, this
- 7:20Speaker 3: is a worthy debate. That's why you're doing it. You know,
- 7:23Speaker 3: this is a big thing for your audience, for every American.
- 7:26Speaker 3: The benefits of AI are amazing. I could just tell
- 7:29Speaker 3: you on certain aspects. Now, there's downsides. it will commoditize
- 7:32Speaker 3: certain jobs. You don't need certain jobs if you can
- 7:35Speaker 3: just plug it into AI, right? But why is.
- 7:38Speaker 2: That a good thing?
- 7:39Speaker 1: I'm always nervous that there's less and less reliance on humans.
- 7:43Speaker 2: That makes me nervous.
- 7:45Speaker 3: Here's the way it should work. That's what they said
- 7:48Speaker 3: when the car was created, less and less reliance on
- 7:51Speaker 3: buggy whip salesmen, right? The technology, if it follows the
- 7:55Speaker 3: trajectory of other technologies, including the Internet, which said there'll
- 7:59Speaker 3: be no need for balls. By the way, I just
- 8:01Speaker 3: read it. I remember doing these stories back in the
- 8:04Speaker 3: 1990s when I was covering the Internet pool bandits' impact
- 8:07Speaker 3: on Wall Street at the Wall Street Journal. I remember saying, well,
- 8:11Speaker 3: this is going to depress real estate prices because malls
- 8:13Speaker 3: are going to go out of business. But after a
- 8:15Speaker 3: little bit of a shakeout, malls are coming back, I
- 8:17Speaker 3: just read in the Wall Street Journal. So remember, the
- 8:20Speaker 3: technology does usually add– it commoditizes certain jobs, and it
- 8:26Speaker 3: creates other jobs because it allows people– to sort of
- 8:30Speaker 3: free up their time to be more productive, and then
- 8:32Speaker 3: other jobs come about because of it. By the way,
- 8:35Speaker 3: I don't see construction workers being taken over by robots.
- 8:38Speaker 2: No, I don't either. No, that's silly.
- 8:41Speaker 1: By the way, the name of Charlie's article today, you
- 8:43Speaker 1: have to read it in the New York Post.
- 8:44Speaker 2: He's so smart. I love Charlie.
- 8:46Speaker 1: White House may impose limited safeguards on AI workers. to
- 8:49Speaker 1: prevent apocalypse, mass extinction. So I want to get to
- 8:53Speaker 1: interest rates quickly, but just to wrap this up, you,
- 8:56Speaker 1: like me, you're on Trump's side.
- 8:58Speaker 2: Trust Trump.
- 8:59Speaker 1: Let's beat China. Let's be the world's best at AI. Safeguards,
- 9:03Speaker 1: you know, all these, the rails, all that is good.
- 9:07Speaker 1: We need that, but let's not get too carried away, yes?
- 9:10Speaker 3: Yeah, and let's be real clear here. Well, are we
- 9:13Speaker 3: talking interest rates or AI? That's my... my position and
- 9:17Speaker 3: what I would believe and I think what the president
- 9:19Speaker 3: believes in. But in interest rates, they're going to raise
- 9:21Speaker 3: interest rates.
- 9:22Speaker 2: Yeah, but wait a second.
- 9:23Speaker 1: Didn't we make sure that Warsh was going to be
- 9:26Speaker 1: our new guy for that not to happen?
- 9:29Speaker 3: Okay, so just so you know, The interest rate that matters,
- 9:33Speaker 3: to be honest with you, is not the one that
- 9:35Speaker 3: Warsh really controls. It's the 10-year bond, which all consumer
- 9:39Speaker 3: rates are priced off, most consumer rates, and to some extent,
- 9:42Speaker 3: the 30-year bond. That's controlled mainly by the market, unless
- 9:45Speaker 3: the Fed goes in and does, you know, prints money
- 9:48Speaker 3: called quantitative easing, and that could backfire, too. That creates
- 9:52Speaker 3: inflation sometimes, as it did during Sleepy Joe's reign. So remember,
- 9:58Speaker 3: the 10-year is trading interest. up. Remember, yes, you read
- 10:01Speaker 3: the headline. It hit 5%. That means all these mortgage
- 10:04Speaker 3: loans go up. The reason why is because there's a
- 10:07Speaker 3: lot of reasons why, including there's competition for capital from
- 10:10Speaker 3: AI build-out, but also people are worried about inflation. So
- 10:14Speaker 3: because inflation eats at bond prices. So bond prices go up,
- 10:19Speaker 3: interest rates go down. And the reason why it eats
- 10:21Speaker 3: at bond prices is because these are fixed income investments.
- 10:24Speaker 3: You get a coupon, you get your money back at
- 10:27Speaker 3: the end of your term, whatever it's 10 or 30 years,
- 10:30Speaker 3: it's fixed. So inflation is very sensitive to that. So
- 10:33Speaker 3: when inflation's going up, those bonds trade off. interest rates
- 10:37Speaker 3: go up, that's how interest rates are pegged. So those
- 10:39Speaker 3: are the interest rates that matter. So if Walsh comes
- 10:42Speaker 3: in and says, I'm going to raise short-term rates, which
- 10:44Speaker 3: is a signal that the Fed is really going to
- 10:48Speaker 3: be tough on inflation, the 10-year bond may go down,
- 10:52Speaker 3: and so might the 30-year, and that might be good
- 10:54Speaker 3: for interest rates. So remember, that's the sort of catch-22.
- 10:58Speaker 3: I don't know why Trump is so focused on the
- 11:01Speaker 3: Fed funds. I was at An Economic Club of New
- 11:05Speaker 3: York meeting, this is about a year ago, And I
- 11:07Speaker 3: heard Scott Bassett say, you know, I finally got Trump
- 11:10Speaker 3: to understand that the tenure is more important than the
- 11:12Speaker 3: Fed funds. And he still keeps talking about the Fed funds.
- 11:16Speaker 2: I don't understand.
- 11:17Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 11:17Speaker 1: You know, I got to tell you the truth, Charlie.
- 11:19Speaker 1: I have the best guests in the world on this show.
- 11:21Speaker 1: I've had Trump just Friday was on for an hour
- 11:23Speaker 1: and Bibi and all these amazing congressmen and senators. And
- 11:26Speaker 1: I'm not saying this to patronize you, blow smoke up
- 11:28Speaker 1: your ass. I learn more. I swear to God, I
- 11:32Speaker 1: learn more from your appearances than any guest I have.
- 11:35Speaker 2: I mean that. because I mean.
- 11:37Speaker 1: That you're so smart and you do such a great
- 11:40Speaker 1: job of breaking it down and explaining it to the
- 11:42Speaker 1: everyday guy.
- 11:43Speaker 2: That's me. I'm a sports guy still, basically. So I
- 11:45Speaker 2: learned more with you. It's so great. So I got
- 11:47Speaker 2: one more for you.
- 11:48Speaker 1: I'm sitting in Dallas and I'm watching the president speak
- 11:51Speaker 1: and he goes, let me tell you something.
- 11:52Speaker 3: Okay.
- 11:53Speaker 2: You guys go out there in November. We win the midterms.
- 11:57Speaker 2: We save the country.
- 11:58Speaker 1: And I'm going to give all of you $ 5, 000. And
- 12:02Speaker 1: then I read the next day from all these Democrats that.
- 12:04Speaker 2: He's out of his mind. He can't do that.
- 12:06Speaker 1: That's going to cost the country a trillion dollars. Can
- 12:09Speaker 1: the president actually do something like that? This is not
- 12:12Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey. I'll give you a car if you come
- 12:14Speaker 1: down to the studios. Can the president actually do that?
- 12:19Speaker 3: I don't think so. I mean, you know, Congress is
- 12:26Speaker 3: the sort of body that sort of doles out the
- 12:29Speaker 3: money right up to the Constitution. I don't think he
- 12:33Speaker 3: could just say, hey, let's give everybody five grand. Now,
- 12:36Speaker 3: is there some sort of backdoor way to consider it
- 12:40Speaker 3: a refund based on X and Y? You know, if
- 12:43Speaker 3: you could sort of legally circumvent constitutional mandates about Congress,
- 12:48Speaker 3: you know, holding the purse strings, maybe. I'm sure he's
- 12:52Speaker 3: got some lawyers working on it. But I think more
- 12:54Speaker 3: to the point, it's a bad policy. I mean, think
- 12:56Speaker 3: about this. We've got $ 40 trillion in debt.
- 12:59Speaker 2: You know, we.
- 13:01Speaker 3: You know, you're bribing, and it looks bad. You're bribing
- 13:03Speaker 3: people to vote for.
- 13:06Speaker 1: You.
- 13:06Speaker 3: There's so much I like about this president. And then
- 13:09Speaker 3: all of a sudden, like, I hear... you know, tariffs
- 13:12Speaker 3: on everybody, you know, stuff he does.
- 13:15Speaker 2: He still loves that word.
- 13:17Speaker 1: Every time he speaks, he has to make sure, you know,
- 13:20Speaker 1: that he loves the word tariff.
- 13:21Speaker 2: He loves, he said, I love God. I love love.
- 13:25Speaker 2: Somewhere in there has got to be tariff. I love
- 13:27Speaker 2: that word.
- 13:27Speaker 3: So you take the good with the bad. I mean,
- 13:29Speaker 3: the good obviously outweighs the bad. I mean, listen, I
- 13:32Speaker 3: give him the noble peace prize for getting rid of DEI.
- 13:35Speaker 1: Right.
- 13:36Speaker 2: Me too. Me too. That was so disgusting.
- 13:38Speaker 1: Right.
- 13:38Speaker 2: And we got it here in New York City. So
- 13:40Speaker 2: in the final 60 seconds, a little rap here, Charlie Gasparino.
- 13:43Speaker 3: Okay.
- 13:43Speaker 1: The economy right now, good, bad, getting better, might get worse.
- 13:50Speaker 2: Where are we?
- 13:52Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's a tale of several economies, right?
- 13:56Speaker 3: I mean, if you're a working class guy, Prices have
- 13:59Speaker 3: never really come down. The inflation rate has come down,
- 14:02Speaker 3: but prices haven't really come down. So it's hard to
- 14:04Speaker 3: make it in this, and your wages haven't kept up.
- 14:07Speaker 3: And I think that has always been my problem with tariffs,
- 14:09Speaker 3: that as much as we need to reset the global
- 14:14Speaker 3: trade agendas that we don't get taken advantage of by
- 14:16Speaker 3: these crappy little countries or any country, for that fact,
- 14:20Speaker 3: that it will impose costs. So you really have to
- 14:23Speaker 3: do that. focused, like maybe on China and leave everybody
- 14:27Speaker 3: else for last, because they will have an inflationary cost.
- 14:29Speaker 3: And I think, you know, so the economy is in
- 14:33Speaker 3: many ways, you know, hurting certain people. It's good for
- 14:36Speaker 3: certain people, like, you know, construction workers are doing pretty
- 14:38Speaker 3: good right now because they're building all these AI things, right?
- 14:42Speaker 3: But average people are just, you know, if you're a
- 14:46Speaker 3: By the way, if you're driving a truck run by diesel,
- 14:50Speaker 3: prices are up, right?
- 14:51Speaker 2: I mean, hard.
- 14:52Speaker 3: I mean, that is filtered through the economy. So it's
- 14:55Speaker 3: a mix. And I could just say the alternative, though,
- 14:59Speaker 3: I think what people should remember is transiting your kids,
- 15:03Speaker 3: wicked inflation, spending money. Taxpayers financing immigrants, whether they're legal
- 15:10Speaker 3: or illegal. Who ever heard of that? That's so crazy.
- 15:13Speaker 3: When my ancestors came here, there was no welfare. I mean,
- 15:16Speaker 3: they just wanted to come here and work their rear
- 15:18Speaker 3: ends off. Think about what the other party stands for.
- 15:21Speaker 3: Hating Israel. sort of now playing the significance of 9-11.
- 15:27Speaker 3: I mean, these are people that are just out there
- 15:31Speaker 3: in sort of la-la land of sickness. So remember that.
- 15:35Speaker 2: Lunatics.
- 15:35Speaker 3: Every time you hear Trump speak, you think he's crazy.
- 15:38Speaker 3: Look at the policies. The policies of Trump are really normal.
- 15:42Speaker 3: I mean, again, you can argue with Paris and all
- 15:44Speaker 3: this other stuff, but he's mainly normal.
- 15:47Speaker 2: He's normal.
- 15:48Speaker 3: They're insane.
- 15:49Speaker 2: Crazy. Lunatics they are. Charlie, I love you so much.
- 15:53Speaker 2: Another great appearance. I mean it, bro. So, so good.
- 15:55Speaker 2: Thank you so much for doing this today. Thank you.
- 15:58Speaker 2: Talk soon, man. God bless you. Charlie Gasparino right there.
- 16:01Speaker 2: Go read his column.
- 16:02Speaker 1: Once again, White House may impose limited safeguards on AI
- 16:06Speaker 1: to prevent apocalypse.
- 16:09Speaker 2: Mass extension. Extension, I say. Thank you, Laurie, out there
- 16:12Speaker 2: in Jersey, too. I love Charlie, too. You learn a lot.
- 16:15Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to Sid and Friends in the Morning.
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- 16:44Speaker 1: What the heck is going on here?