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Richard Arnold: US correspondent on the growing calls to take AI risks seriously · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZB.
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  Speaker 2: State side, Richard Arnold, morning to you.
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  Speaker 1: Good morning, Mike.
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  Speaker 2: So how are we going with these AI threats and chatter?
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  Speaker 1: Not super well. You know, the tech titans are joining
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  Speaker 1: the call for slowdown on all of this, but then
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  Speaker 1: the politicians don't seem to have much of a clue,
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  Speaker 1: do they? The boss of Anthropy, Dario Amadei, is out
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  Speaker 1: now with a series of proposals which has led the
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  Speaker 1: bosses of OpenAI, Sam Altman and Elon Musk, SpaceX and
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  Speaker 1: others to nod their heads in general approval. But there
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  Speaker 1: is not yet any agreement on regulatory measures. And the politicians, well,
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  Speaker 1: Trump is saying, whoever wins with AI wins. Trump was
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  Speaker 1: pressed on this.
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  Speaker 3: Do you have any concerns about AI leading to human extinction?
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  Speaker 1: No, I don't have any. I have concerns that if
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  Speaker 1: we don't win.
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  Speaker 3: AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position.
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  Speaker 1: Beat the Chinese seems to be about as far as
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  Speaker 1: his response to the AI warnings goes. On the Democratic side...
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  Speaker 1: Former President Obama is calling on his party's candidates for
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  Speaker 1: 28 to make AI one of their top issues. The
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  Speaker 1: top Democrat in the House right now, Hakeem Jeffries, has
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  Speaker 1: slammed Republicans for moving too slowly on this. But when
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  Speaker 1: asked for specific ideas, he wouldn't say, except to suggest
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  Speaker 1: there will be discussions on it this week sometime. No
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  Speaker 1: better on the Republican side, where Speaker Mike Johnson is
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  Speaker 1: saying on this subject....
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  Speaker 3: I believe we need to summon the platform providers all
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  Speaker 3: to one big meeting and work this out together in
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  Speaker 3: the same room.
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  Speaker 1: Hold a meeting. Yeah, that'll fix it. The anthropic boss, Amadé,
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  Speaker 1: is putting forward some real ideas, saying he is concerned
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  Speaker 1: by the recent cases of AI systems going rogue and
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  Speaker 1: by AI working on its own self-improvement. He says to
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  Speaker 1: start with, AI could seize large parts of the internet
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  Speaker 1: and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, but
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  Speaker 1: then it could get even into more dangerous areas. So
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  Speaker 1: Amadé suggests that in less than two weeks... when Trump
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  Speaker 1: and China's President Xi meet up, they should take an
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  Speaker 1: initial action on this. Step one, he says, should be this.
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  Speaker 3: The small thing is if we could, US and China
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  Speaker 3: could agree that we won't use AI to develop biological
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  Speaker 3: weapons or release AI models that bioterrorists could use to
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  Speaker 3: develop biological weapons. We're already both signatories to the Biological
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  Speaker 3: Weapons Convention.
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  Speaker 1: More broadly, he is posing some sort of general slowdown.
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  Speaker 3: We can slow down within the margin, within the envelope
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  Speaker 3: that we have, particularly if we don't sell chips to
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  Speaker 3: authoritarian countries and if we do more to help our
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  Speaker 3: own security so that our technology is not stolen. I
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  Speaker 3: believe that will buy us At least a little time.
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  Speaker 1: International cooperation on technology that could transform economies and perhaps
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  Speaker 1: even threaten human existence. Yeah, sure. Says Amadei on all
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  Speaker 1: of this now.
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  Speaker 3: This is the thing that most puts us in a bind.
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  Speaker 3: It's not about commercial competition. The geopolitical situation is the
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  Speaker 3: hardest to deal with.
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  Speaker 1: Even within the USAI companies, he suggests that Anthropic could employ...
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  Speaker 1: independent evaluators and says other AI companies could do the
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  Speaker 1: same thing. But ask if these companies right now even
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  Speaker 1: have a chat group among themselves. Amadei simply laughed. Right.
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  Speaker 2: So then the war and the Houthis movement in Yemen
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  Speaker 2: over the weekend, where does this take us?
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  Speaker 1: Well, a few other things as well. You know, it
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  Speaker 1: seems to be moving on several fronts. Another tanker has
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  Speaker 1: just been struck in the state of Hormuz on the
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  Speaker 1: southern Omani track. A fire was ignited there. Latest data
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  Speaker 1: shows that on Saturday, your time, only one tanker got
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  Speaker 1: through the oil channel when before the war, of course,
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  Speaker 1: there would have been many, many. Earlier, Iran claimed to
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  Speaker 1: have targeted 10 ships, including eight oil tankers, and the U.S.
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  Speaker 1: military destroyed several Iranian oil tankers in what has kind
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  Speaker 1: of turned into the tanker wars. Iran also appeared at
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  Speaker 1: this brick summit of emerging economies in New Delhi, joined
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  Speaker 1: by the leaders from Russia and China and India, all
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  Speaker 1: slamming U.S. policy in the region and leaving Washington looking
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  Speaker 1: pretty isolated. Fuel prices here are rising, got to tell you,
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  Speaker 1: by the day. Diesel now at an all-time record high.
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  Speaker 1: Don't know how soon that's going to hit New Zealand.
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  Speaker 1: The price of Brent crude jumped to $ 110 a barrel
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  Speaker 1: today before dropping back to $ 105. Another front is expanding
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  Speaker 1: in Yemen, where the Iranian-backed Houthis, as you say, seized
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  Speaker 1: a small Red Sea port the other day, and they're
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  Speaker 1: now moving to extend their military involvement. They've also attacked
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  Speaker 1: Saudi energy sites and have moved to block Saudi shipping.
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  Speaker 1: And Iranian officials will meet with reps of the Gulf
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  Speaker 1: states tomorrow in Amman, seeking ways to bypass the American
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  Speaker 1: diplomatic efforts and try to manage the situation. How does
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  Speaker 1: the U.S. factor into all of this? Serious challenges on
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  Speaker 1: a number of fronts. Indeed.
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  Speaker 2: See you Wednesday. Appreciate 278 on average from Gatsby on
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  Speaker 2: answer to Richard's question about diesel at the moment. California's
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  Speaker 2: enacted over the weekend new company tech restrictions for the
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  Speaker 2: under-16s for exposure to behaviorally addictive features and banning toys
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  Speaker 2: containing AI companion chatbots. Another one bans for the next
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  Speaker 2: four years the manufacture and sale of toys for that
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  Speaker 2: incorporate a companion chatbot. Related measure requires parental controls on
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  Speaker 2: chatbot programs, along with other safety and risk assessments. Now,
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  Speaker 2: I don't know how that works in practical terms, not
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  Speaker 2: only at all, but also the fact that it's in
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  Speaker 2: a state, not a country. So you sort of, it's
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  Speaker 2: a cross-border type thing, which is kind of weird. The
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  Speaker 2: most important thing, or the more important thing I thought
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  Speaker 2: over the weekend, was a guy called John Solomon, who
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  Speaker 2: Trump hired a couple of months ago, and this was
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  Speaker 2: the fee around the November 3 midterms, and they were
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  Speaker 2: going to enact some sort of emergency. And his job
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  Speaker 2: was to look around and find trouble so that Trump
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  Speaker 2: could pull the trigger. He came out over the weekend
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  Speaker 2: and he says there's nothing here and there is no
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  Speaker 2: need for an emergency. So if you were running that
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  Speaker 2: theory that he was going to pull the trigger on
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  Speaker 2: an emergency for the midterms, this bloke says it ain't
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  Speaker 2: going to happen, which I suppose is good.