As the AI industry likes to tell it, superintelligent bots could one day cure cancer and end poverty. Or in the worst-case scenario, they might wipe out all humans from the face of the Earth. In recent weeks, Silicon Valley’s existential concerns about the technology it is racing to build have blown up. The tech journalist Kara Swisher sees it differently. “We have to stop thinking AI is going to kill humanity,” she told Atlantic executive editor Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic Festival. If the AI future goes sideways, bots won’t be to blame. People will be. “These are people at the helm of these things.”
In the several decades that Swisher has covered Silicon Valley—formerly as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, now as the host of two podcasts—she says that she’s seen tech whizzes make the same mistakes again and again: failing to take proper precautions against the products they are building. “One of the things about tech people is they’re the smartest people in the world, in case you need to know, because they like to tell you,” she said. In her interview with LaFrance, Swisher also discussed the economic implications of the AI race, who is likely to win, and how Americans can respond to this dizzying and worrying AI moment.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Adrienne LaFrance: You have been paying attention to the tech world and AI for basically ever. And now it seems like within the past, say, two weeks, the rest of the world is suddenly paying much closer attention. So I wanted to start just by talking about where you think we are, in this moment.
Kara Swisher: I think the penny has dropped with a lot of people. Years ago I wrote Burn Book, which was tough on the tech industry. And at the time, they were sort of in an ascendant period, not as well liked as they started off. Someone came up to me and said, This book is really mean, as if I’m their friend or something. And recently that same person came up to me and they said, It wasn’t mean enough, which was kind of interesting. And I thought, Well, don’t worry; I’m coming up with a new one. It’s going to be great. The new book opens up with them standing with Donald Trump at the inaugural in front of the Cabinet.
LaFrance: By them, you mean this collection of tech leaders?
Swisher: It was Elon Musk; Sundar Pichai of Google, or whatever they call themselves now—Alphabet; Mark Zuckerberg; Jeff Bezos. To me, that was the sort of moment that you understood, because these are people who were not particularly political, including in Trump 1 … but then figured out that you can stick a coin in this president and get what you want, right?
So anyway, we’re at a moment where something’s going to happen. Something that I have said for a long, long time is that there are no guardrails on these people, ever. Not once. And there’s never been, in American history, except maybe the railroad expansion or some of the manufacturing expansion, or you go back to kids being here in New York City working in dangerous factories and things like that—there’s never been a moment where the people do not get a say. And these people get to make decisions for the rest of us that are really problematic, especially since seven people, five of whom have mental problems, and so with unlimited money, they do.
LaFrance: When you put it that way, it’s a little scary.
Swisher: It is a little scary. And the fact that we’ve allowed to do that. And they’ve also been able to capture politics, in a way, especially with Citizens United. But beyond that, the amount of money they have is astonishing. I always joke the deli on my corner has more legislation against it than most of these big companies.
LaFrance: And I want to get back to regulation, but you mentioned the railroads. What is the right historical analogy? I ask leaders in the tech world to help me understand how powerful this technology is and how consequential it will be relative to other major revolutions. And you get answers ranging from Oh, it’s the biggest thing since the internet to It’s the biggest thing since fire, right?
Swisher: AI has been around forever. Let’s be clear. This is not a new thing. If you look at early internet pictures, it’s laughable, when you look at early Yahoo or things like that. At the time when this was starting several years ago, I said This is a Cambrian explosion. This is a bigger deal than anything else because it reaches into everything.
LaFrance: Well, it’s interesting you put it in evolutionary terms.
Swisher: I think about it like that. And one of the lines I had in Burn Book was that everything that can be digitized will be digitized. And so the analogy I’m using right now is that we have to stop thinking AI is going to kill humanity. It’s like guns, you know, guns kill people. Like, no. People kill people, right? Or the car just ran into someone, got in an accident. These are people at the helm of these things, making these businesses and making a lot of money. That’s one thing. The analogy I use is nuclear energy, nuclear fission, like cutting up the bomb. And it’s the thing I said on Pivot today, which is they split the atom and, oops, it went boom. Oppenheimer knew it would go boom. They know what this is going to do. They don’t know everything. And they often do. One of the things about tech people is they’re the smartest people in the world, in case you need to know, because they like to tell you.
LaFrance: And they’ll remind you.
Swisher: And they’ll remind you. But then they’re like, We don’t know. That’s the thing that drives me crazy. And so I compare it to nuclear energy. Can you imagine if, when we were developing the bomb, it was private companies doing it? It’s the same thing. And AI is even more powerful because it can set off a nuclear bomb. So let’s be clear of where it could be going.
LaFrance: I think the point you make is so important that we have to remember. That there are people using their own agency and power and wealth to make decisions that will affect everyone. Talk about those people for a minute, because you’ve known a lot of these figures for a long time, and I’m curious to hear. First of all, there is this sort of really interesting reordering of what even the major tech companies are. Like five to seven years ago, we would have maybe not even mentioned Sam Altman or Dario Amodei.
Swisher: Sure.
LaFrance: But talk about from what you’ve known of the folks you’ve known well and covered and written about over many years. How is Silicon Valley different? Does this flow from the original sort of pioneering spirit of Let’s build it because we can—and there is true optimism there, and there are potentially great uses for AI—or has something shifted in the culture of Silicon Valley?
Swisher: You know, I don’t know if there’s a culture there anymore. There was. And actually this week I interviewed Aaron Sorkin at a private event. I’ll have him on the podcast in a longer interview, but, about ex-Facebook people, watching The Social Reckoning, which is quite good. It’s not as good as the first one, but it’s good. It’s a really good movie. But I saw a lot of people and we were like, What happened to us? I saw a lot of people I covered, and it was a real community. It really was. And it was very exciting and fun and interesting. And everybody has scattered to the winds essentially. The very wealthy people have insulated themselves in these places where they have an enormous amount of enablers. “Cashmere prisons” is what I call them. They have chiefs of staff and cars and this and that.
LaFrance: Right, it’s not like tinkering in your garage anymore.
Swisher: It never was. They love to do that. Look, I’m wearing a hoodie. I’m like, that hoodie costs $600. So I did one of my first stories for The Wall Street Journal about that. All the weird things they’d have to do.
We’re all equal. I’m like, why do you have controlling share? And they’d be like, Well, because to protect it. I go, yeah, but if we’re all equal, why aren’t we equal? They used to always lie to themselves almost continually. And now they’ve just figured out that all they have to do is hand money, and then they get what they want, or they don’t. So they have this idea of being simple people. And they’re not. They’re just not like you and I, and they pretend they are. I really do actually like Mark Zuckerberg doing his fighting, right? Fine. Whatever. It’s weird, but fine. I’m not going to judge. I do myself judge, but that’s okay. But I’m like, good. I’m like, good, good, good, great. You do that. But why do you need to do it on a floating thing in Lake Tahoe?
LaFrance: At least it wasn’t the White House lawn?
Swisher: That was fine. Whatever. I couldn’t get mad about that. I don’t give a fuck if he wants to do that. And then he hired MMA people. And, like, the MMA people have to pretend they’re having a good time. The whole thing, it feels Roman-like. And of course, he loves Rome.
He’ll probably think that’s a compliment, but it’s not. But it feels odd. And it’s accompanied by a feeling of victimization. How dare you not understand my genius? . My famous parting with Elon Musk is he didn’t like a tweet I had. Then he wrote me, You’re an asshole.
LaFrance: What was the tweet?
Swisher: Elon’s going to Elon. I know, crazy mean. And since then, I have done a lot better. But it’s crazy. I have a heart filled with hate, according to him.
LaFrance: Let’s talk about the economy. So there are any number of scenarios that I’m really curious about. You hear people talking about how AI is entirely a bubble and it’s hype. Or, you know, especially recently after the Dario Amodei essay, this question of Oh, are they afraid of their own IPO? Or does the economy crash?.
Swisher: It’s very confusing. But here’s the thing. I think they’re genuinely concerned. But why now? Because 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I’ve been at dinner parties where they talked about this concern. Sergey Brin, all of them. They were concerned then; they knew the atom would go boom when it blew up. They knew it. Now it’s happened. One of the things I didn’t think got a lot of attention that should have was the Hugging Face hack.
LaFrance: It has now.
Swisher: It has now. But at the time I was, like, what?
LaFrance: Two months ago or whatever, right.
Swisher: I think they were surprised by that. Although why would you be surprised? I tell this story again and again because I want people to understand. When Facebook came out with Facebook Live, I was in a room getting it demoed and I pointed out you could commit a murder on it. What are you going to do about that? What if people do this? What if people do this? What if bad actors get a hold of this? And they called me a bummer, like they never anticipated the consequences. Same thing here. What are you going to do when AI does what we think it’s going to do? And so they are genuinely nervous. Because now suddenly there’s liability, whether it’s Facebook’s $17 billion settlement—not enough, but better than $5 million, which was the last fine they got essentially.
They’re starting to see, like cigarette manufacturers, that the lawsuits are piling up, whether it be chatbots, with kids or whatever. And I started interviewing the parents two years ago who were affected by these chatbots. And one of these guys came up to me and said, When are you going to stop interviewing the parents? I go, when you go to jail, I said, that’s when. This is criminal, what you’re doing, and you’re releasing a dangerous product without any kind of guardrails. But then the government, all our public officials, have let us down. I’m talking about the federal government. The states are trying. They have let us down. Right now, they found out. They’re nervous about it; I think they’re nervous about liability. That’s one. Two, the costs of this are insane. Like the internet cost a lot, but paid off. This is something else. There’s 10 frontier companies, whatever. Seven frontier companies. There’s going to be two.
LaFrance: Do you think that the two that survive are going to be among the seven today? Or is there some new player that’s going to emerge?
Swisher: Yeah, Google will be one of them. And then another probably. I don’t know which one.
LaFrance: If you had to bet, which?
Swisher: I think they’ll merge. It’ll probably be Google and Anthropic. But I don’t know. ChatGPT—it’s too expensive, what they’re making. It’s not sustainable, and it’s not in the old-internet way of not-sustainable. This is disastrous. If e-toys went bust, who the fuck cares, right? But this is massive. This is trillions.
LaFrance: And it props up the whole economy.
Swisher: It props up the stock market. Trump has made a bet on AI that is very dangerous and it’s very fragile. And then it has companies next to it—Nvidia, Oracle, all those other things. And so there’s a financial worry they have. So they’re worried about liability and criminal liability. They’re worried about the stock market. And they’re desperate not to be blamed for what’s about to happen. And especially with the stock market—I’m amazed the stock market still hasn’t really taken the hit. It’s probably going to. Our stock market depends on seven companies. That’s not good.
LaFrance: I hate to make you speculate but I’m going to: So, when I think about this, there are any number of ways things could sour economically. There can be a regular old correction— maybe it’s a bubble, maybe it’s dotcom bust—that sort of thing. You could even imagine swarms of bots are starting to take over the internet, rendering the internet unusable, and then we can’t rely on the internet the way that we do and the global economy relies on. You could imagine a bank run because people are freaked out by AI. You could imagine a bank run led by AI agents because they’re the ones doing the trading. When you think through all the different scenarios that would not be good for the economy, what is the most likely outcome?
Swisher: All of the above. Any of the above. We already have a lot of threats to our infrastructure from foreign actors. This is us doing it. And one of the things that drives me crazy is it’s being fed on humanity. Humans with superhuman intelligence are going to do bad things, and that’s the one thing they don’t anticipate—technology that can be a tool, but it is always a weapon. There’s never a moment where it’s not both. Any of these scenarios are totally possible. And then who’s to blame? What happens? Who fixes it? What are we going to do to mitigate things like that?
Right now Trump is having a meeting. Guess who’s in the meeting? All the tech leaders. Are any critics, academics, scientists in there? I wasn’t invited to the White House, and neither was Scott Galloway. We have some thoughts of things you should do. We’re not experts, but we’re pretty good. They don’t invite anyone that would push back. Their favorite argument is that the reason we’re on top is because we’re unfettered. This is bullshit. They’re not the only innovative industry in our history. Cars were pretty cool. Light. I love electricity.
But these are things that happen at those times. So they act like they’re the only people who have invented things. I just watched the series on Ben Franklin. That guy invented a lot of shit. You know what I mean?
LaFrance: A top-tier guy.
Swisher: He really was, actually. A really important person. But they think they’re the only thing. That’s really astonishing that they don’t think that, Oh, we cannot be fettered. We cannot be fettered. Or even edited, when you read some of their essays. Mark Zuckerberg wrote an essay once. He sent it to me and goes, What do you think? I go, you’re in desperate need of an editor, but no one’s going to edit him.
LaFrance: Well, it’s funny you mentioned electricity. I’ve been thinking about that in this context, too, that the counterweight to the economic concerns that these companies will offer is that there will be massive productivity gains. But in terms of electricity, it was roughly 1880s that it comes along. It’s really not until the 1920s that factories adopt electricity and the rest of society is starting to see the gains that come from this new technology. Obviously, AI is moving so much more quickly in terms of improvement and eventual self-improvement. But on what timeline should we expect to see its greatest promises fulfilled?
Swisher: I think that’s something we actually don’t know. But I’ll tell you, the economy already sucks for most people in this country. Who got all the good bits? They did. Besides the Trumps, who got all the good bits? They do. Like, when are we going to get this stuff? Incomes are still flat. Years ago—and I tell this story a lot because it’s really important—I was talking to one of these people about income inequality, and I kept saying, if we don’t do something about income inequality, you’re going to have to armor-plate your Tesla. That’s where it’s going. And they built the Cybertruck. That was their answer. So it’s really kind of astonishing that they don’t think this is a problem. And they don’t think this is a problem because they live separately. They have a whole world. They have their own health care; they have their own mountains in Montana. These are not the people that are going to fix this thing. The last thing they do is the thing I have long called the “Xi or me argument.” It’s either China or us. I was like, not so good. Not a good choice for any of us. We have to come to an agreement globally. Trump’s about to meet with Xi Jinping. Zero is going to happen, because he’s not an Einstein, let me tell you. Everybody, I don’t know if it occurred to you, but Donald Trump is not Einstein. But we have to have a global cooperation with especially China around AI and make decisions. And in China, they have more strictures on their AI than we do here by far. And most people kind of like AI.
LaFrance: Well, they’re not allowed to not like things.
Swisher: I think we’re not allowed to not like things. I think we have to say, Oh, look, you’re wealthy and therefore you have the answer to everything. And you’ve noticed with these tech people, suddenly they’re experts on Ukraine; suddenly they’re experts on vaccines. At one point, I think it was Bill Ackman, who just gives me a headache every time I think of him. But come on. I’m glad he’s doing the brain institute. Good for him. But he did a whole thing on DEI. He was obsessed with DEI. They’re all obsessed with unfairness of other people. Whatever. Only people with a gun to the head of humanity would say they’re a victim, but he went on and on about DEI, and I think I said something like, I’m going to do a multipart series of tweets on hedge-fund investment because I know nothing. They think it extends to other things.
LaFrance: The hubris.
Swisher: Yeah. Can you imagine a Wall Street guy doing this? They’re just here to make money. If I leave you any message, they’re here to make money. That’s all they care about. They care about shareholder value. They care about protecting their stuff. They care about their weird beefs with each other. Because a lot of what’s happening in the AI thing, if you’re noticing all these different speeches by wacky Palantir guy who is in very desperate need of a green tea—no, not a green tea. What’s a calming tea? Whatever. I was almost like, here’s a gummy.
LaFrance: Chamomile, someone said.
Swisher: He’s in desperate need of chamomile. They all have different opinions because there’s all these beefs happening in their businesses and they act like that’s not the thing. If I leave you any message: They don’t care about you. They don’t care at all. And it’s not to say they hate you. They don’t care about you.
LaFrance: Let’s talk about regulation because this moment has been interesting for me—this new push to pace the frontier, to slow the pace of AI development. People are seeing this as a novel thing in the tech industry. My somewhat cynical position from someone who’s covered tech for a long time is that we saw Mark Zuckerberg do the same when he realized he was up against the wall with Facebook, this posture of Regulate me, bro, please.
Swisher: Yes. Well, throw me in that briar patch.
LaFrance: Congress has no recent history of effectively regulating anything in tech. But what should happen? And are these calls for regulation even realistic?
Swisher: I know Congress has regulated things. They’ve regulated planes and trains.
LaFrance: In recent history. I mean, post-2000.
Swisher: They haven’t. And it’s because in the beginning, when they did Section 230 and I covered that for The Washington Post, they wanted to make it grow. Well guess what? The baby is a fucking monster.
LaFrance: Section 230, for people who aren’t as much of tech nerds as we are, is the law that makes it such that the owners of social-media platforms can’t be treated as publishers, so they’re not treated as responsible for the material that they publish on their platforms.
Swisher: They can’t be sued. Now they are. Now what’s happening is two things that I think you should keep in mind. One is the legal stuff that’s going on—all this liability and product-liability and negligence stuff is starting to gain ground very much like the cigarette. You’re going to see tons and tons of that. That’s great. Let the lawyers after them. Our lawyers always do a good job at taking money from people.
LaFrance: And that’ll probably start at the state level. Don’t you think?
Swisher: It has started at the state level. But right now, one of the things they’re relying on is that the reason why they’re kowtowing to Trump is because they think he’ll do bad things to them. That’s why they’re doing it. That’s why you saw this rumor that—I urge you all to go see the Musk documentary. It’s terrific, by Alex Gibney. But Universal was thinking of not distributing it. They’re all trying to think of doing things to quiet him down. November comes, which—and I think it’s going to go the way everybody thinks it is. The Democrats are coming for them, and they think the Democrats won’t because they’re not crazy like Trump. One of them said to me, Well, the Democrats won’t be as mean to us as Trump. I said, they’re going to be as mean to you, and I’m going to be standing behind them yelling you better be fucking mean to them because they deserve to be regulated. They deserve it. And it’s better for them. It’s better for us, and we have to stop relying on them as magicians. They’re like alchemists. They’re not. They’re not smarter than you. They’re just richer.
We never had a privacy legislation in this country. We’ve never had algorithmic transparency. There’s like a dozen things we could do that would not hurt their businesses and would make us safer. And I think what they’ve done to us with social media, to our kids–and to us, by the way. It’s not just our kids who are; we’re all addicted, right? We’ve all been made addicted to this thing. And I think voters, and, I’ll finish with this, data centers, is a proxy. The anger over data centers, which is very real, is a proxy for the anger regular people know and feel in their own lives about what this is doing to them, and it doesn’t make them anti-tech. Tech is amazing. I love tech, but it doesn’t have to kill us, right? A 10 percent chance. Whatever it happens to be. The percent is actually 14.
LaFrance: I need to ask you one more question. We’re not going to let it end on that note, I need to ask you one more question. What are you doing right now? It’s such an uncertain time. What have you changed in your life to prepare for this moment? Are you buying gold bars?
Swisher: No.
LaFrance: No, but seriously, what? What are you doing? And what should people do? And how should we think about?
Swisher: Don’t buy gold bars. Don’t go there, okay? That’s bad.
LaFrance: Okay, sure. But is there anything we should do?
Swisher: She’s bought gold bars.
LaFrance: I don’t even know where to buy a gold bar.
Swisher: They’re also heavy.
LaFrance: So that was a bad example. But what should we do? What? Because the individual can feel like you’re up against this behemoth.
Swisher: But you’re not. This has happened before in American history. You are not up against this behemoth. They fall quickly. Trust me, they do. They’re very much bullies in some fashion. I’ll tell you two very quick stories. One of these people, Sam Altman, has had an apocalypse plan, and he told it to me years ago. This is 100 years. They all were into the apocalypse plan, which was weird to me. And he goes, This is what I have. I’ve got this place in Big Sur. I’ve got a motorcycle at my house, where I know where he lives.
LaFrance: He’s later said he regretted telling you this, by the way.
Swisher: Okay, so I’ll repeat it then. I don’t really care. I don’t give a fuck. So he told me this whole plan and he goes, What’s your plan? I said, I’m going to kill you and take your things. And then he thought, She could kill me and take my things. And he hadn’t planned on that, genius that he is. And he’s a little guy, so I could easily take him.
LaFrance: All right. We should solve this nonviolently.
Swisher: Don’t do it. But don’t participate in their apocalyptic—We’re going to Mars. We have our bunkers. Fuck them. This is our world. You know what I mean? Don’t participate and let them run the fucking show. It’s yours. Go to your legislatures, push back. All these people across the country are pushing back on data centers. It’s going to matter. The only people I believe in in this country are voters. Like, even if they make bad choices.
LaFrance: Hear, hear.
Swisher: I think that we have to stop giving them this power and demand of our public officials that they stop being essentially handmaidens to sedition. That’s what’s happened here.
LaFrance: I could talk to you all day, Kara. We’ve got to run.
Swisher: No gold bars.
LaFrance: No gold bars!
