The Politics Of AI 01:07:24

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I don't know. This paperclip thing just has me picturing like a sci-fi horror Clippy. Clippy. Evil Clippy. We're all Clippy. I mean, Microsoft Bing and Clippy will kill us all in the end. Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. How concerned, if at all, are you about the possibility that AI will cause the end of the human race on Earth?

well, more importantly for our purposes, is that rather alarmist question, a good or bad use of polling. A recent YouGov poll suggested Americans are quite concerned about AI. And so today we're going to try to gauge how reflective that actually is of public opinion and also what politicians are doing about it.

We're also going to turn our focus to Tennessee. Last week, state House Republicans there voted to expel two lawmakers for leading a pro-gun control protest inside the Tennessee House chamber. The move drew national attention to the protests that have been ongoing there since last month's school shooting in Nashville. And actually, as we record Monday morning, there's news of another mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.

So what's the fallout from those expulsions and where does the public stand on gun laws today?

But before we get to any of that, last Friday, a federal judge in Texas ruled that one of the drugs used for nearly all medication abortions, Mifeprestone, was unlawfully approved by the FDA back in 2000. The ruling won't go into effect for seven days, given the government time to appeal, but this is likely setting up the Supreme Court for another very high-profile ruling on abortion. Here with me to discuss it all, Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver. Hey, Nate. Hey.

Hey, everybody. Also here with us is politics and tech reporter Kaylee Rogers. Hey, Kaylee, how are you? Hey, good. How are you? Doing well, doing well. And also with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Scali. Hey, Jeff, how are you? Hey, Galen, doing well. All right, good to hear. So we got a lot to cover today. And before we dive into the previously planned podcast, we got news Friday evening about this ruling in Texas. So let's begin with that.

This ruling came down. It was from a Republican-appointed judge in Texas. This is a rather conservative ruling and somewhat controversial. I mean, this morning, I've even seen Republican lawmakers, notably Representative Nancy Mace from South Carolina, come out essentially against this ruling. Where do things stand at this very moment, Kayleigh, in terms of law and FDA approval?

First of all, I highly recommend reading the story that our colleague Amelia wrote that's on the site that covers all of this in detail. And we're going to be updating, obviously, as the week goes on. But basically, this ruling doesn't go into effect until seven days later. So that would be either Thursday or Friday, depending on how you count exactly. In the meantime, we're waiting to see if either the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court weighs in and sort of stays the injunction so that it doesn't go into effect while it's sort of making its way through the courts.

If they don't do that, then technically that means that the FDA is supposed to basically rescind its approval of mifepristone. But at that point, it's kind of up to the FDA if they want to abide by this ruling or not. They could potentially go with the other ruling that came out at the same time and say that they're not actually able to go back on approval without going through their processes that they have established for rescinding approval of a drug.

So there's still a chance that mifepristone could be available. Even if, though, the FDA doesn't enforce it, you know, it could go state by state. People might be confused. They might be just cautious. You know, abortion providers may choose, you know, I don't want to risk being shut down. And so we're going to stop using this drug in particular. So it's still, it's a very chaotic, tumultuous time. And it's really unclear exactly what this will mean even a week from now.

Yeah, wait, Kaylee, just to clarify here, what is the second ruling? And is this essentially this judge saying like potentially don't comply with a judge's order? Like, obviously, this gets into thorny territory for democracy relatively quickly if, you know, orders from judges aren't complied with. So what's going on there?

Right. So there's basically like a dueling ruling that came out less than an hour later from a federal judge in Washington state. And that was in response to a separate case that a bunch of Democratic AGs had filed, basically saying like the FDA can't just pull

drugs that it has approved from the market without going through its proper process. And that was that judge's ruling that it agreed with that statement that the FDA has a process for removing drugs to the market. It can't just suddenly pull it. And so you've got competing rulings, one saying it must pull it, one saying it cannot pull it. And those are two judges that are on kind of equal standing with each other. So it's going to be a complicated decision either way.

Yeah, it hasn't been very long since this decision came down. So we probably don't have updated public opinion data. But, you know, this has been expected for a while. So what do we know about how the public views Mifepristone, medication abortions, things like that, and the possibility of an FDA approved drug being taken off of the market because of a court ruling?

Yeah, I mean, there wasn't a lot of polling on this specific case in particular. There's a bit of polling about abortion drugs in general. So there was a Harvard-Harris poll at the end of last month asking whether or not Americans support or oppose women having access to abortion pills. 65% support, 35% opposed, one from Marquette Law from earlier in the month.

asking whether or not a state should be able to make it illegal for people to get and fill a prescription from an out-of-state provider for abortion pills.

74% said no, states shouldn't be able to prevent people from doing that. There was a Reuters Ipsos poll also last month that included a few questions such as whether or not women obtaining abortion pills through the mail, whether you support that, 50% support that, 38% oppose. Whether or not you support women obtaining abortion pills at their doctor's office or a clinic, 66% supported that, 24% oppose. So

Overall, I mean, it's kind of similar to abortion in general. There's like a bit of a majority are in favor, but it's not overwhelming. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about these pills specifically and what they do and how they work. Just very quickly, mifepristone is typically the first pill that someone would take to induce an abortion. It blocks the hormones, which basically ends the pregnancy and allows...

everything to sort of detach. And then there's a second pill called misoprostol that causes uterine cramping and sort of expels everything. So technically, you know, abortion providers could still use that second pill only. But the problem is it's not as effective. It can cause a lot more side effects. It's a lot more painful because you're not actually ending the pregnancy first before that. There's less risk of that one being taken off the market because it's used for other things besides abortion, whereas mifepristone is just an abortion drug.

Kaylee, I was curious, what's sort of the timeframe for when this is usually used? This is usually more for earlier abortions. So first trimester up to 10, 12 weeks. It sort of depends on the situation, quite frankly. And oftentimes this is used to treat things like a miscarriage where someone has miscarried and their body hasn't recognized that. That can happen...

you know, later in pregnancy. And sometimes that's the best, the best option, depending on the case. You know, I mentioned at the top that Republican Nancy Mason from South Carolina had come out against her. She's a more moderate representative in general. How are other politicians in general responding either, you know, on the right or left?

Well, as you can expect or would expect, Democrats are pretty outraged about the decision. You even have Democratic governors in places like Massachusetts and Washington who are using essentially sort of state resources or talking about state resources to buy states.

certain amounts of the drug actually in order so that it could eventually be used by healthcare providers in the state. Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, basically had the Department of Corrections in Washington purchase a three-year supply of

With the view of that having legislation introduced in the state legislature that would then allow for the Department of Corrections to give that to licensed health providers as an example of the reactions here. So besides just like PR reactions – I'm sorry, Jeffrey.

Just to clarify what that means, is the governor of Washington saying, regardless of how this turns out, Washington isn't complying with the ruling if it's that Mifepristor needs to be taken off the market?

Um, I'm not sure if he's specifically saying it that way, but his actions would certainly suggest, uh, something to that effect. Um, the fact that the state department of corrections is buying a three-year supply of the drug and trying to, and they're trying to pass legislation in the state legislature to then allow the department of corrections to then give that to licensed health providers in the state of Washington, um, would seem to be a sort of a direct affront to the, uh,

to the ruling in Texas and maybe more in line with the ruling from Washington. And how else are politicians reacting? Well, it does seem like Republicans are, for the most part, staying a bit mum about it. You know, this decision came down, you know, right before Easter weekend, and there was some

There was a note in the New York Times article about it that for the most part, well-known republicans weren't tweeting about it. They were tweeting about things like China or transgender athletes or Israel. Ron DeSantis tweeted something about Good Friday. So for the most part, there wasn't much sort of like jumping around and celebrating at least publicly from these members.

Although Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith from Mississippi, a Republican, did say that the abortion ruling was, quote, a victory for pregnant mothers and their unborn children, unquote.

And was she the only – I saw something suggesting that she was the only Republican, at least in the Senate, who applauded the ruling publicly. That, to the best of my knowledge at this moment, is true, although I can't say that I've dug through every single Twitter account of all Republican senators. Got it. So we'll keep monitoring.

Nate, I'm curious for your thoughts here, because we haven't talked to you since the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, which seemed to be another piece of evidence in favor of the idea that particularly in lower turnout elections, Democrats are very energized by the issue of abortion.

I mean, we don't know how this is going to play out. And most legal thinkers that I've read on this suggest that if it makes it to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, even though it is quite conservative, will not rule in favor of the FDA taking this off the market. But we don't know at this point. It's still possible. And nonetheless, this news will make its way through the news anyway. So people will hear about this and be thinking, OK, well, Republicans must support this idea.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think the silence speaks volumes, really. The GOP, I think, understands that this issue is one in which satisfying their base or their donors is not going to help them win in the general election. You know, how much do you attribute Wisconsin to abortion versus gerrymandering versus January 6th, I think, is like a little bit ambiguous, certainly. But like the GOP has...

correctly, I think, according to kind of the political science, like, you know, message to voters that we are not a party going for like the center here anymore. Right. We and some of these issues are are pretty darn right wing and on high salience issues that people are are able to detect and will affect their vote. Yeah. All right. So from here, you know, what are we watching for? Is there anything more that we can really say or it's just wait and see?

I spoke to Amelia before coming on today. She's off this week. Otherwise, I'm sure she would be happy to share her thoughts. But basically, she was talking about how the politics of this are really important. You know, for abortion rights groups, their worst case scenario would be that the courts agree with Kaczmarek on the safety stuff and also possibly his arguments about the Comstock Act and then the FDA rules.

decides to pull Mifepristone from the market, and then, you know, let's say a Republican gets elected in 2024, then the process to get Mifepristone re-approved wouldn't get restarted. So not that that is a likely scenario necessarily, but that is a possibility sort of further down the road. And so there's, you know, the legal aspects of this and the sort of bureaucratic aspects of this, but there's also the political aspects of this.

Well, we're going to keep an eye on what happens next. Of course, I'm sure Amelia will be back on the podcast next Monday to talk about this when she's back from break. But let's move on and talk about Tennessee.

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Last Thursday, the Tennessee House voted to expel two lawmakers who led pro-gun control protests on the floor of the chamber in violation of House rules. The two members who were expelled, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, are black. A vote to expel the third participant in the protest, Gloria Johnson, who is white, failed.

This is all part of a tense scene that has played out at the Tennessee Capitol in the aftermath of a shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville at the end of March. Protesters, many of them students, have rallied inside the Capitol in favor of gun control. The Republican supermajority has largely passed measures that increase security at schools but don't restrict guns in response to the shooting at the Covenant School.

So, Jeffrey, what is the historical precedent here for expelling state lawmakers in general and maybe for protesting in a state legislature specifically? Well, for the most part, expulsions from state legislatures or Congress have tended to involve the member in question having committed some sort of illegal behavior or facing serious allegations regarding some sort of illegal behavior like taking bribes,

Or tax fraud or things of that nature or some sort of serious personal misconduct that might eventually include some sort of criminal action but not necessarily like multiple accusations of sexual harassment or misbehavior with like a woman.

a minor who is like a page in the state capitol. These are some of the examples that I pulled from a list for Ballotpedia, I should note. So it tends to be this sort of thing where it's illegal behavior or serious personal misconduct. And you don't really see examples of breaking the chamber's rules as something that pops up as an example. So in that sense, there's not

I mean, there may be precedent for it. I don't have a complete list of all expulsions from state legislature, but it does seem to stand out as not sort of in keeping with what usually is behind these sorts of moves. And what would they typically do, Jeff? Like, I feel like there's other things.

Like there's levels before expulsion. Right. Like you could lose your committee assignment or something like that. I mean, that's what we've seen happen in the U.S. House. Some sort of like censure legislation passed by the chamber in question, you know, state senate, state house. Yeah. Kicking them off their committees. You know, it's that sort of thing. Usually not outright expulsion from the chamber.

Yeah, I was looking at the Tennessean, which also published a list of past expulsions from the Tennessee state legislature. And they include, like you said, you know, sexual misconduct, accepting bribes, etc. And then

You know, the most lawmakers that were ever expelled from the Tennessee state legislature happened in 1866 when six lawmakers were ousted during a special session after they tried to prevent Tennessee from ratifying the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide citizenship to former slaves. So some interesting history dating back hundreds of years. Yeah, I mean, actually, I actually am curious what prevent means. Like, were they...

Was that actually some sort of violation of chamber rules to try to stall out and prevent a vote? I would actually be very interested to hear more about that.

But it is interesting history, to be sure. Yeah, I mean, these protests have been going on for a while. And honestly, in part, what this expulsion accomplished, you know, we're talking about it right now on the podcast, and these protests were happening last Monday when we met as well, but we weren't talking about them. In part, what they've accomplished is the focusing of national attention on the pro-gun control protests in general. I mean, what kinds of responses have we heard to protests

The expulsions and now to the protest, like I think Obama weighed in on this and he doesn't weigh in on all that much in his post-president. I mean, around elections, he does a lot of campaigning, but he doesn't usually weigh in on sort of state level issues. Yeah. Is this like a corollary to the Streisand effect? You know, it's like, oh, I didn't really want that much attention paid on this thing, but I but I raise the issue even more myself. And now everyone's talking about it.

Yeah, that just looms to me as a possible fallout from this. Well, that's why it's kind of like what effect does it have apart from this Trisand effect, right? The GOP already has huge super majorities in Tennessee. So these legislatures don't have a lot of power through the actual vote in the state legislature. And so all you're doing is creating –

A news cycle where you look like you're against democracy and against gun control. And granted, like, I think this is more of like a MSNBC junkie story than something that like the average not very enthusiastic voter is that engaged in. But there's not like a lot of obvious upside for the GOP in terms of like, you know, if you at least like get Roe v. Wade overturned or something, then like, hey, that's a big victory for you here. There's there's little substantive gain.

And maybe more to the point, is there now pressure on Republicans to enact stricter gun laws? My sense is no, but I'm curious if anything has changed. I mean, you did have a gun bill passed last year, right? Of course, of course.

It was like a bipartisan bill that had provisions to encourage states to enact red flag laws themselves. Which red flag laws have been introduced in Tennessee by Democrat lawmakers, but they never go anywhere. They die after they're introduced. It's happened a couple times over the last few years. Red flag law is particularly notable in this case because it seems like perhaps could have been preventing the shooting. Yeah.

Basically, red flag laws are when somebody is having an acute mental health issue, their family and or law enforcement can temporarily remove their guns from them until they're in a better place mentally. And then they have their guns restored to them. And it's actually one of the few gun regulations that has support from both Democrats and Republicans. When you look at the polling, it's a pretty big.

popular one, but Tennessee just in general hasn't been interested in those kinds of laws.

I mean, I would assume that in Tennessee specifically, you won't see much change on this front. I mean, it is a very Republican-leaning state. Tennessee is like a fascinating – has had a fascinating political trajectory because it was once sort of – like many parts of the south, including the upper south, there were a lot of democrats. Democrats controlled things for the most part and –

It has sort of transformed into a situation where there's sort of Nashville and Memphis, and then the rest of the state is extremely red. So Republicans have massive majorities there, but whether gerrymandering or not was involved in some of those – in sort of the scope, I guess the magnitude of their majorities, they would have huge majorities regardless because it is such a red state now. So –

In terms of, you know, there being a change in Tennessee specifically, I would be very surprised. Yeah, and I think there's this tendency among Democrats and liberals to think when a mass shooting happens that that will spur, that'll change hearts and minds, that'll spur Republicans to act. But that's never the case. Like how many, it's consistently, we've seen over and over again, that is not the case. That a mass shooting is not possible

a catalyst for Republicans to suddenly change their position on gun control. I don't know what version of that liberals are imagining that suddenly it will make a big change. Yeah, and I think also what's sort of interesting about this, like the reason to me that this could go sort of beyond Tennessee and grow and be in sort of hang around as a story is the expulsions specifically, and then also who they expelled.

It was like, oh, we'll expel two black members, but we'll actually fall short of the two-thirds majority to expel the one white member of the legislature who was facing expulsion charges. And so to me, it's sort of – it just sort of adds fuel to the fire, I would think, for sort of criticism of the legislature for its move and could keep the story – add in race, the sort of the greatest tinderbox in American politics, and I could just see it sort of –

hanging around longer than it might have otherwise. Yeah, because now we'll be following whether those lawmakers get reappointed to the state legislature, whether they win their election to try to win their seats back that they were expelled from.

Which is a whole thing because actually like the state legislature is making threats to like Shelby County about – I forget the exact special election appointment process in Tennessee for the state legislature. But for instance, if a member gets back into his old seat, I know that the state legislature was making – was basically threatening Shelby County with like cutting off funds for something. Shelby County is where Memphis is. I should clarify. So yeah, I mean it just seems to just magnify this even more. Yeah.

There was also, you know, the way, you know, this all was started with these protests calling for gun control. Large crowds of people, very passionate, loud, coming into the legislature. It was very disruptive. And there was a perspective among some on the right that this, why was this okay? But when we storm, you know, state legislature buildings or the Capitol, it's an insurrection. So there was a...

comparison being made there, you know, in some right-wing media and among some right-wing voters that... Yeah, pretty amazing false equivalency. Yeah, I mean, there is certainly a difference there. Um...

But that was sort of the perspective that was being seen. It was seen like, well, this is just as disruptive or, you know, there should be some kind of response to this. And I think that's why it rose to this level that a few years ago, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe we would have seen just those censures or, you know, some other kind of slap on the wrist for this kind of disruption of the chamber.

We've heard expressed here a trend that we've talked about on this podcast actually many times over the past seven years, which is that in the wake of a mass shooting, even if public opinion does move and oftentimes, I mean, to the point about.

things don't change after mass shootings. They do. I mean, you see it in the public opinion polling. And actually, you see the most change oftentimes amongst Republicans because they have further ground to travel in terms of supporting stricter gun laws. You know, Democrats already overwhelmingly support stricter gun laws every day of the week. You'll see significant movement amongst Republican rank and file for stricter gun laws.

But then with time and space from the most recent mass shooting that we'll receive, and there is a general stasis in public opinion polling, I will say, and we are in a period of time where we're having mass shootings relatively frequently, as I mentioned at the top of the show, there was another one this morning in Louisville.

In February, dissatisfaction with gun laws, this is according to Gallup, hit a new high with 63% saying that they were somewhat or very dissatisfied. The most recent low was 42% in 2012. You know, it may well be that the takeaway from all of this is like, this is the exact same trend that we've described on this podcast over and over and over again. But is there any reason to believe that

the calculus will change. Because as Nate mentioned, at the very least, there was a bipartisan gun control law passed last year. Are there strands of evidence that the calculus is changing?

Here's where I think we might actually see change over time is when you look at the generational divide among younger Republicans and older Republicans. There was a YouGov survey last month asking about gun control laws and among Republicans who were Gen X, boomers, silent generation, there

23% said that they should be more restrictive than they are today. 51% said they're sufficient, and 26% said they should be less restrictive. But when you looked at Gen Z and millennial Republicans, 39% said the gun law should be more restrictive. 39% said they're sufficient. 22% said they should be less restrictive. So you can see there's a generational divide there, and as

you know, older generations move on and younger generations become a bigger part of the party. I think maybe that's where you might see some catalysts for change right now, based on the breakdown of the base and their positions. Like there's just not a lot of incentive for Republicans to move on these issues. It's not particularly called for or popular among their voters. So why would they do it?

Yeah, I think one of the complications with, for instance, the Gallup polling is that you had 44 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying that they were dissatisfied to some extent with the current state of gun laws. But what share of those –

Or dissatisfied because they think they should be looser. So it's like that dissatisfaction does not inherently mean that they – that means that they are supportive of more restrictive. Now, it is true that Gallup's other polling where they ask about do you believe gun law should be stricter or more strict or less strict or stay about the same, you do have like a pretty clear majority. I think it was 57 percent last year when they last really stayed on this question saying that things should be more strict. So that was overall dissatisfaction.

But at the same time, you still saw like a huge partisan split where only 27 percent of Republicans said things should be more strict. So to me, you know, try to try to sort of translate that data to the satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied comparison makes me think that, you know, a substantial chunk of the people who say that they're dissatisfied who are Republicans are saying it because they think that the law should actually be less strict. It's like Republicans living in New York or California or something like that. Right. Gun laws are quite strict.

If you look at that, what did you say, 27%, 37% of Republicans? 27, yeah, yeah. Well, that's still a chunk of their voters, but there hasn't been any evidence of politicians, lawmakers being punished for not acting on gun control and not making it more restrictive. Like I said, there's not a lot of evidence for them to think that doing this would help them continue to win elections or expand power,

It just doesn't seem like something that Republicans want. I think there is one place where we have seen amongst politicians and it's with Democrats. And perhaps it's just as reflective of changing coalitions as it is of changing public opinion. But Democrats don't really campaign anymore in a way where they like tread lightly on the issue of gun control, right? Like everyone remembers John Kerry, like bringing the TV cameras out with him to go hunting in 2004, right?

Joe Biden doesn't do that, doesn't need to do it. It probably wouldn't help him if he did do it. So I think that is one change where at least Democrats feel like more appear that they're like on more confident ground in their own positions that they're taking on gun control.

Yeah, it seems like there's probably a lot of things going on there. For one thing, obviously the party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, they've changed in terms of their base. There's perhaps greater support for stricter gun laws. But at the same time, this has also been going on in a period where arguably gun laws have gotten less strict and less strict.

Uh, so, you know, it's, it's like both the, like both the parties are changing, but also response to perhaps what's happening, uh, at large, you know, across the country. So, you know, there's sort of multiple moving parts here. And just to, to highlight Gillian, you mentioned the frequency of shootings. I'm just looking at ABC news here, 146 mass shootings so far this year, according to the gun violence archive, which is more mass shootings than days in 2023. Yeah.

On that very bleak note, we are going to move on to a later note, which is today's good or bad use of polling.

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Today's good or bad use of polling was actually suggested by you, Nate. So a recent YouGov poll asked Americans, how concerned, if at all, are you about the possibility that AI will cause the end of the human race on Earth?

19% said very concerned. 27% said somewhat concerned. 23% said not very concerned. And 17% said not concerned at all. Another 13% weren't sure. I know that's a lot of numbers, so let me be a little more concise here. 46% of Americans said they were at least somewhat concerned that AI will cause the end of the human race on Earth. Nate, is that a good or bad use of polling? Oh.

I think it's a polling result that one should not take terribly literally. People like to be agreeable and respond to questions when you ask them questions. It's kind of like chat GPT in that way, ironically. And so if you suggest something in the frame of the question, you say, okay, are you concerned that like, let's say, are you concerned that like,

solar flares and solar radiation, expanding solar radiation could cause like the end of life on earth, right? You might say, I don't really know a lot about that, but like, sounds like that sounds smart. So I'm going to say yes, because you suggested this as a poll you gov, but the, so let me, let me back up, right? The background for this is that there are a

There are communities of people, people in the tech community, people in the community called effective altruism or rationalism that have for really quite a while been concerned that super intelligent artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence, AGI is a term that's sometimes used,

poses existential risks to humanity. The classic version of this argument is that, imagine that you had, this is from Nick Bostrom, who was a Swedish philosopher at Oxford. Pulling out the Oxford philosophers this morning. Well, but they're a big part of this movement. It's Oxford and the Bay Area, basically. And,

Imagine you have a machine that's very, very intelligent and also is set to maximize the goal of making as many paperclips as possible. It basically destroys all of humanity to turn people into paperclips and fulfill its mission

Is this credible or not? Right. When you first hear it, you, you might think not. And there are people who think that AI is dangerous because it can cause humans to do bad things to other humans. Right. There was like a report last week, I think of like an AI chat bot that like,

encourage someone to commit suicide, right? But you can imagine different schemes and scams and different ways to enhance blending dangerous chemicals together or things like that, um, or biomedical problems that AI would aid and abet. So there are different scenarios people are worried about. And in that community, it, um,

has been a mainstream position that this is something to be worried about. This has not been something that we've been talking about very much in kind of mainstream political discourse. But last week or two weeks ago, a Time magazine article

article by Elisir Yudkowsky, who is an AI researcher and one of the most doom-centric. He thinks there's a good chance we're all going to die. He wrote this op-ed in Time, which is still widely read, and said, this is really bad. We should think about, do we need to potentially take military action against data centers that are doing these training runs on models? That thrust the debate into the mainstream. There was a question for President Biden about it in a press briefing

And most people have no idea what they're talking about, right? This has been something debated in one community for years. All of a sudden, it's a new debate, a new community. People don't have priors on it. And so, yeah, that's a very long-winded version of where...

But how many people have seen Terminator or any of its, you know, sequels, right? Yeah. No, for sure. Wait, okay. So first... It's all you need. So first I should say, I perhaps stand corrected. This is not a lighter segment. This segment may actually address the end of humanity. But Nate, I like... So understanding the context that you... No, it's not... Like this s*** is more important. Even if you're like not like a doomer, it's more important than 95% of the stupid s***.

we're talking about in politics from day to day, right? It's, you know, a fairly high stakes debate and like people aren't good at like, like we should be debating more about like,

pandemic preparedness and why aren't we investing in preparing the next COVID-19, right? That's a really high stakes issue where we can talk about climate change and things like that or nuclear war, right? For better or worse, this kind of community of rationalists, I think, are good at identifying which issues substantively matter more. So Nate- And things involving existential risk matter a lot. I-

I'm not sure, though, after everything you've said, whether or not this is a good use or bad use of polling. Because at first I thought it was bad. But then you seem to cite a lot of evidence that it's actually a good use of polling. It's a good – well, I don't know. I mean, you probably know about what I think about what happens when issues get politicized. And we'll talk about the age of Congress in a moment. You know, I am not sure it's going to be good for the AI debate to have this be more mainstream. Right.

And to have regular Joe, MSNBC, and Fox News and CNN watchers have opinions about AI policy that probably eventually get tied to partisan frames around the issue. I think that'll make the debate much stupider. But what if it turns into an issue like China where there's a competition between the two parties to seem more hawkish on it? Because that doesn't seem totally out of the realm of possibility right now. When I...

hear politicians talk about this. There appears to be concerns on both sides of the aisle. And Democrats are worried about like, civil rights issues. And you know, AI, like all in all different kinds of ways, Republicans are like, well, this could replace everyone's jobs. So if you don't like NAFTA, or if you don't like free trade with China, like get ready for AI. You know what I mean? Like, there are reasons to believe that there could actually be a race to hawkishness.

Right. I mean, look, there are lots of angles why people might be like, I think in the long run, AI will be subject to

a lot of cross pressures for a lot of reasons, right? There's also the whole like, there are people who think the AI bots are too woke. There are people who think they're not woke enough, right? There are issues over copyright. If it's just mining all the text and all human output, right? Then like that creates some pretty big copyright issues potentially if you're kind of regurgitating something that like I wrote or someone else wrote, you know, decades ago.

So it's going to be, but look, this is going to be a major policy debate for the rest of our lives, right? Even if you're not particularly an accelerationist or a doomer or these different names, right? This is still probably a technology debate.

Lower bound is as important as the internet probably, right? Maybe not lower bound, but like reasonable bound, right? And that's going to affect our lives profoundly in lots of ways. So the AI regulation debate is here to stay.

Okay, so it sounds like directionally you're supportive of this poll. And this is the last time I'm going to harp on whether or not it's a good or bad use of polling because I understand that the issue is larger than that. But I do want to give Jeff and Kayleigh the opportunity to weigh in on how they view this use of polling as well. Well, I mean, I agree with Nate on the significance of this debate in general. And this has been...

I can't tell you, like an ongoing discussion in my household for a couple of weeks. But this particular polling, this question, the way it was framed, I don't know if it's particularly useful. I think it raises a bit of fear mongering among a pool of respondents who may be

I don't know that they've read all the Oxford philosophers on this subject. I certainly haven't. Sounds like if they did, though, they would have been even more in favor of it ending the human race. Possibly, yeah. It sounds like from Nate's synopsis. I worry a lot about... I feel like there's a tendency towards technophobia and just assuming that if there are any negative consequences to a technological advancement, then that negates all of the positive aspects

implications of it. And there's also, you know, a limit to, I think that obviously this policy question is going to continue to be one. I think it certainly should be one. I don't think that there was enough discussion around policy and regulation with the internet and there continues to be issues because of that fallout from that. And so I think talking about it early is smart. This is going to advance much more quickly than the internet ever was able to. And

There are going to be economic, political, social implications of it. That said, you know, there's also the kind of a bit of you can't stop the march of progress. So it's I don't know, it's complex, but I don't know that this question does a lot of good. It might even make the issue seem more silly, actually.

If you're trying to focus people's attention on the seriousness of the issue, having the opening salvo be, do you think this is going to end humanity, might just make people giggle, as I did. Right, yeah. Like, is ChatGPT going to kill us all tomorrow? No. Is it going to drastically impact our economy? And are people going to potentially lose their jobs because of this?

Probably yes. And how do we want to manage that? And how do we want to respond to that? But that's not as fun of a question, I guess. I guess my answer depends on whether you think we live in a simulation or not. Oh, okay. Really getting better there. It's a bad use of polling if you think we actually have free will and we're just responding to the concern setup of the question. And so it's not really telling us much of anything. Yeah.

And then it's just NA if we live in a simulation, because who cares? So I'm obviously kidding. But I do have multiple text threads with friends about the Fermi paradox going and questions like that. So the future of AI is obviously very interesting, maybe a little scary. But yeah, on the polling question, I'm going to go with bad use in terms of it really telling us anything.

So there are two more serious politics, public opinion topics that I want to talk about, which is one, what is a good gauge of how people are thinking about this? And are people aware of the issues in proportion to its severity? And then two, which is related,

Why hasn't AI really been regulated, at least federally, yet? So maybe let's talk about the first one first. To the extent that this is a political issue, how aware are Americans of it, Nate?

Not very. So the one poll I'm fond of looking at for a lot of reasons is like there's just a ongoing for many years Gallup poll that asks people open-ended question without any prompts. What's the most important issue facing the country today? Right. And given how many issues there are to even get to like, you know, 2% or 4% in that poll is a lot, right? Like things like climate change or crime or, you know,

or abortion might get to like 2%, 3%, 4%. Currently, the category for AI, which is like progress of technology slash computers or something is at like asterisk or 0%. So some tiny fraction of people listed as the most important issue.

When, if, when or if does this issue become mainstream enough that like 2% of people say it's the most important issue that I'm worried about or voting on? I mean, I would track that number, right? When does that get into the non-asterist territory for a sense of like, this is now one of the top dozen or so or 15 issues that get debated in politics?

And so is public interest to blame for the lack of regulation or is it something else? I mean, Congress has historically never been very good at regulating technology. There's a gap of knowledge in some cases, not always. There's also, yeah, I think a lack. I mean, there's a lot of things to legislate on right now and a lot of things that voters are more interested in that it's hard to prioritize this.

And it is complicated. Also, technology is evolving constantly. Something like Section 230 that you write at the dawn of the internet maybe kind of makes sense then. Now there's problems with it that we couldn't really anticipate before. And it's challenging to do. It's complicated. It requires a lot of understanding and knowledge. And there's not a lot of

a lot of political appetite for it. So it's not a great combination to get robust technological regulations in place. Yeah, I think one issue too is that like, it's not as though people in Silicon Valley or the tech sector agree on what should be done anyway. Like notwithstanding that like, that's a community that might have some trouble with political buy-in anyway. But it's like not like you could go to like the 100%

foremost experts on this issue and get a clear consensus about like, A, what the threats are and B, what should be done about them. Because there are arguments about, well, if we pause, then doesn't that help China? On the other hand, you might have existing players, you know, Microsoft might not mind if you regulate people, other people from developing AI, if you regulate them, they wouldn't like it very much at all. But there aren't like natural,

partisan coalitions on the issue yet. And the average member of Congress is a dinosaur when it comes to tech issues. Their staff might be slightly better, but because it is so off the radar screen, they're not hearing from their constituents as much. And so there's not much guidance. Honestly, if you are someone who is an expert, it probably is time to weigh in because the conventional wisdom is still forming on this issue.

Yeah, I should say that part of the reason we're talking about this is because a bunch of tech leaders, including Elon Musk, called for a pause on the development of AI beyond GPT-4. So here's a quote from the letter that they all signed as part of the Future of Life Institute. We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

They go on to say, advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one, not even their creators, can understand, predict, or reliably control.

So it sounds like there's no consensus. Like that letter didn't say, this is what we think should happen. It just said, we don't have an answer. So at least we need to hit pause for right now. Right. I'm sorry. Elon Musk is asking you to pause AI because he doesn't currently own any AI companies. Right. Well, that appears to be part of what Nate is saying is that for the interested parties,

They all have competing interests. Is this like the Donald Trump thing of like, we just need to pause and just figure out what the hell is going on here? We need to figure out what the hell is going on here. I mean, Nate, is it clear what the options are if politicians did decide it was time to regulate? You could try to treat it like a technology like nuclear weapons or something, right? Where there's strict regulation of the materials that you would need

to build a GPU that could do one of these massive training runs, right? There are sanctions, if not military activity, if people do it kind of in violation of prescribed agreements. And you'll hear different things about like how much can you kind of do this in your basement versus not. So to do a training run where you...

test the whole corpus of data, like GPT-4 as the latest version, that can take a long time. That's a significant act that not everyone can do. And it might be a little bit hard to...

to do without it being detectable. But what if Russia wants to do that? What if China wants to do that? Do we really have any ability to regulate that at all? Well, again, the analogy is probably to nuclear weapons. However, unlike nuclear weapons, which don't have a lot of utility apart from killing everybody or deterring other people from killing you,

These tools will have a lot of utility. People will find them interesting and enjoyable, right? As they get better, they will seem less in the Uncanny Valley and more enjoyable and helpful and efficient in different things, right? And so that's the other side of it too, is like, and also people who have like very high upside cases, like this is going to like make us realize the singularity and stuff like that, right? So the people can say it's high stakes either way. And so it's going to get

I think pretty complicated. But clearly, major players in Silicon Valley are in an arms race, use that analogy somewhat literally, where Google is like, well, okay, Microsoft has been very aggressive and OpenAI has been very aggressive, so we have to as well. I'll put it like this. If there's no regulation taken, then you're going to have an arms race. It'll develop, I think, as fast as capitalism would allow it, basically.

Yeah, I mean, one of the roadblocks that you mentioned, Nate, to regulation is... I don't know how else to put this, but like...

who is in Congress and their relationship to these kinds of technologies. Somewhat related to this, Jeffrey, you recently looked into why our current Congress is the oldest in history. And that is a topic that comes up a lot in discussion when they have congressional hearings on technology. I think, you know, of course, Mark Zuckerberg going to testify to Congress created a lot of viral videos. It happens every so often. What did you find?

Yeah, so as you said, Congress today is older than ever. The median member of the US Senate is 65. The median member of the House is 58. Up until about 2000, the median senator had never gotten above 60, and the median House member had not gotten above 50 yet.

So today, over the last 20 years or so, Congress has gotten notably older. Now, a lot of that has to do with just like the overall aging population. So the US as a whole has gotten older. And so like the median age now of the entire population is like 38, 39. And the median age of people who would be eligible to even get elected to the US House of Representatives, they have to be at least 25 to get elected to the House, at least 30 to get elected to the Senate, is actually now just north of 50.

So there's just sort of – there's something going on. It's just like the broader trends in population. But at the same time, like in a world where we still have a large number of younger people, you do get a situation where you have an older congress trying to deal with questions about technology. And we saw that actually in the TikTok situation.

hearings from March. And there was just kind of a funny thing where Vox noted this, that there were three different times where a member accidentally said tic-tac.

We're talking about TikTok. And that was just sort of, you know, it's just sort of an amusing example. We've heard of them before. Ted Stevens back in the mid 2000s saying, you know, the Internet is a series of tubes, sort of, you know, the tendency for older members to maybe not be as aware or familiar with technology that's sort of

become popular among maybe the population as a whole and particularly people who are on the younger side. And so sort of understanding that is a big thing. And I can obviously talk further about the makeup of Congress, but that's sort of like the broad takeaway.

Yeah, I should say these things are related. And I wanted to include it because you recently wrote a very interesting piece about this that's like interesting in its own right, separate from the technology question. And there are really interesting charts and folks should go check it out on 538.com. I should also say, obviously, old people use technology, young people use technology, middle aged people use technology, and a lot of the tech companies that are going to be developing

be developing this technology are run by people who are probably the same age as Congress. So there's probably also an issue of expertise in general. Like a lot of people who end up in Congress go to law school, but a lot of them don't necessarily study computer science. Right. And actually, you know, that's one of the things that's like, I don't want to be too ageist here talking about Congress being older because it's not just simply down to that. It's also, you

Members of Congress having sort of the right support staff, like at the end of the day, members of Congress are only going to be experts on a handful of things, things that they have a background in or some sort of significant interest in that they have developed an expertise in. So on most issues, they're not going to be like area experts. It's just not possible.

So what they have is they have support staff, and they have support staff either that's in their own office or there are different offices on Capitol Hill that are devoted to certain topics that will share –

A member of Congress will say, hey, can you give me the rundown on this particular issue? And the Congressional Research Service will write up a study for them and send it their way, for example. And one of the little things that I noticed or noted and found while I was doing research on this was that Congress used to actually have what was called an Office of Technology Assessment Office.

And it was defunded in 1995 and so has ceased to exist, and there's been occasional conversations about bringing it back. But it was actually devoted to sort of research and aiding off members of Congress with information about science and technology, and that doesn't exist anymore. And you wonder in our fast-changing, technologically fast-moving world if having something devoted –

More specifically to it would be like a helpful thing to have. And that was just sort of an example of like ways that we can't expect members of Congress to know everything. But we also would hopefully give them the tools to better understand what they're dealing with. I mean, look, also, if you have tech-friendly skills, right?

you're very employable, right? It tends to therefore like attract a different type of person. The person that goes into politics, I think all those people who majored in English, just running our country. No, history, political science. Ouch.

I'm one of them. Don't worry. Don't send me emails. I get it. I studied international studies. Yeah, I was a history major. But go ahead. No, but like as a STEM profession, let's become more and more employable every year. And the humanities professions do not. It's just a fact. And also Silicon Valley has always been...

kind of looked at Washington, D.C. as beneath it, sort of, right? That these people don't really understand capitalism and risk and technology, and we do. And so move fast and break things instead of asking for regulation, right? So the relationships aren't really strong. And I think the tech world's also kind of not quite been able to deal with kind of being seen as

Kind of the heel turn in public perception among at least kind of progressive elites toward the tech sector. That's happened, I think, within a few, maybe a half decade or so. And I think people are still concerned about massaging their ego and things like that. So for various reasons, it's like a little bit of oil and water, these two parts of the world trying to interact. Not just progressive. Big tech has become...

Popular to hate on all sides. Yeah. Everybody hates them. It's interesting. I mean, obviously, it's popular to also bash the financial sector, although it is highly regulated. And the relationship between New York and Washington, D.C. is much closer, I would say. But also, financial regulation is in large part the product of a series of crises over hundreds of years. So...

Maybe that's just what's going to happen. Well, you know, it's like they're the new trusts. It's like trust busting in the late 19th, early 20th century. It's like...

You have these giant technology companies that have just massive market capitalizations and have their tentacles and all sorts of things. And it's – you get the real big business vibe. So there is maybe historical precedent for something that's this important and has this much influence on society getting a harder look from Congress and from politicians. Yeah.

We'll see. Anyone have a parting thought on AI, the future of humanity, the competency of lawmakers, the relationship between New York and Washington, D.C., or polling? Gun control, abortion. Covered a lot here. I will say that I think humanity is going to cause the end of humanity long before any of our tech gets there. We're on track. Savage. It's a really dark note to end on.

But also, I mean, humanity created AI. So even if AI did it, it would still be humanity. I'm right no matter what. Let me, this is my final question. Participants in this podcast, are you either very concerned, somewhat concerned, not very concerned, not concerned or not sure with regards to the question, how concerned, if at all, are you about the possibility that AI will cause the end of the human race on Earth?

Not very. Not very. Somewhat concerned? Somewhat concerned. I would probably go with somewhat concerned. Somewhat concerned. Like what if it's a 5% chance, right? That's very concerned. Do you think it's a 5% chance? And where does 5% come from? Looking at surveys of experts on this issue, that's probably somewhere where you get mid to high single digits, I think is probably the consensus estimate, if not a little bit higher. Of that 5%, what's the percent chance that we all end up being made into paperclips?

I mean, like Kaylee, I'm more worried that like – so to me, the scenario is will AI turn us all into paperclips? I mean, maybe, but that's not where the 5% would come from. It's like will these tools cause humans to do other things to other humans more easily and more effectively, right? That's a concern. Also, there's –

Things just get really weird. If you kind of carry the science fiction narrative all the way forward and now you have some other intelligence that like is more intelligent than we are. Well, what if you lose like,

a lot of freedom, right? What if it tries to engineer your life, kind of treat humans as like pets or something like that, right? You know, that's not necessarily great either. Or what if, what if we are so afraid of AI, justifiably or not, that we like destroy lots of technology and we kind of go back to the stone ages and like destroy the internet and things like that, right? That's Dune. You know, so there are lots of, there are lots of scenarios. Yeah, no, I mean. The Butlerian Jihad, guys. You know,

I don't know. This paperclip thing just has me picturing like a sci-fi horror Clippy. Evil Clippy. We're all Clippy. I mean, Microsoft Bing and Clippy will kill us all in the end. I think you have to say like allegedly or something so you don't get sued, Nate. Allegedly. Always good to cover your bases. Allegedly Clippy. Don't bring Clippy's wrath.

See, it's hard to both take this seriously and not have fun with it at the same time because it does all seem like kind of crazy, right? You have, again, these communities are like effective altruists and rationalists and AI researchers. It's like a very small community

eccentric, esoteric group that punches above its weight as far as having buy-in from academics like tech moguls and people in the media, I guess, like me. But I think they're not used to how ridiculous this contention will sound to the average person. And

Does that mean that it is ridiculous? I don't quite think that, right? But like, it's going to be like a lot of translating that has to be done because it hasn't kind of bridged this cause and then it's now bridging very fast into like mainstream political discourse, which, you know, even non-weird debates become stupid when they get touched upon by partisans and stuff like that, right? And so here you have a weird debate. You know what it reminds me of? Yeah.

Nate, there's a coalition, like a campaign to stop killer robots. And whenever I mentioned that to somebody, they kind of like snicker and think that's very funny and think of Terminator. But this is a legitimate discussion that we should be having as a society as robotics continues to advance. And naturally, you know, we see military applications for them. We need to discuss whether that's a path we want to go down and if not, how we want to regulate it.

Yeah, you know, I'll see some video on Twitter of some robot doing some kind of incredible gymnastic or throwing thing, and I'm like, oh boy. Yeah.

they really are advancing quite rapidly. To bring this back down to like political science for a second, Nate, you sort of said, you know, we don't spend enough time talking about these things that are so essential to the future of humanity that are more important than dumb that gets a lot of airtime on cable news or in the media in general or whatever. Like according to political science, the best way to, uh,

move legislation through the system is to not have a spotlight on it and to not have it become partisan. It sounds anti-democratic in a way, and I understand those critiques of that sort of philosophy. But one of the reasons among many, many that bipartisanship has become more difficult is that every aspect of the sausage making process has the bright lights of the media shining

focused on it. And so politicians can't sort of talk to each other outside of the limelight, have those relationships, be a little more like sincere, earnest, and not so showy,

and hash out how to actually make the sausage. Because once everything becomes politicized, and once this one little piece, or polarized, this one little piece of the conversation gets played a million times on talk radio or cable news, then everything blows up and falls apart. And so if the goal is to have sort of responsible regulation of AI, is there an argument that like,

It should not happen in the sort of like partisan media spotlight? I mean, in principle, if you had an industry consensus, here's how we would like to be regulated. Then, although it's a little bit anti-democratic to have all these rules written without public input from a utilitarian standpoint, that might be good.

But there is no consensus and also the industry is self-interested in different ways. What's best for Google and Microsoft might not be best for the country as a whole. So the default is that things are not being regulated very much. And I think my perspective is that you'll probably have some incidents that scare people that cause things to be regulated. The first

to combine topics, the first school shooting where there's some AI generated manifesto where the shooter talked to a chat bot or something, right? If there is detection of an attempt to commit bioterrorism that's successful or stopped that has an AI linkage, I think that will cause some type of moral panic or maybe there should be a panic. I don't know, right? Maybe it's not wrong, but that will change things, I would think, a lot. Yeah. And for people who maybe

heard what I just said and are like, what are you talking about? Like, that seems crazy. Like, how many Americans are even aware that the Chips and Science Act passed last year and that it cost a quarter of a trillion dollars and addressed many aspects of technology and the economy? Like, most people are not aware because lawmakers just got together and passed it. They felt like it was important. It happened outside of the limelight of the media and it didn't become partisan and it was just done.

Anyway, rant over. I think we're going to leave it there. But obviously, this is something we will come back to now that we've ripped the bandaid off and have started talking about AI on the Politics podcast. For now, thank you, Kaylee, Nate, and Jeffrey. Thank you. Thanks, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the virtual control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or a review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.