The Texas ‘Trumpapalooza,’ And Will AI ‘Kill Us All’ Within A Decade?

0:00It's been the U.S. wide open, okay? It's been so fluid on both sides. The U.S. wide open. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. Yes, in fact, today on the show, we are in part talking about tennis, and we're talking about the U.S. Open, because there are four Americans that are left in the U.S. Open so far, which means, by the way, It's been since 2003 that both an American man and American woman took the Grand Slam together. At the time, it was, I believe, Serena Williams and Andre Agassi. It could happen again, but we've got a lot of big matches ahead of us over the next few days.

0:40Plus, we're talking about that resignation tweet from an AI researcher at Anthropic. It has now gone viral, I believe, over 150 million views in not that much time. And he is warning that AI could actually kill all humans within the next decade. What? How? And why? We're going to try and get to the bottom of that.

1:06Up first, though, so Republicans are gathering in Dallas this week for their party's first ever midterm convention. It's not really a convention, though. No votes, no decisions. The GOP is hoping that this is going to help motivate not just their base, but also less engaged voters. And President Trump made sure they were listening when he dropped this announcement in his keynote speech last night. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in history, we've never had anything like what's happening.

1:42But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for$5 ,000. So will this so-called Trumpapalooza with this issuance potentially of$5 ,000 an ounce, is it going to build momentum for the GOP heading into November? Or is it going to backfire? For this, I want to bring in NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haik. Hi, Garrett. Howdy, from Dallas. I mean, you know,$5 ,000 handed out to every American, that's great. Who wouldn't love five grand? The question is, can it actually happen if Republicans keep control of the House and Senate?

2:34It could cost more than it seems a trillion dollars if they were to do this. Are people on board with this? Are Republican lawmakers on board with this? Like, could the president actually issue these checks? It has been a fascinating litmus test to see how the party of fiscal responsibility has responded to what is essentially a$5 ,000 taxpayer giveaway offer by the president without having consulted Congress, whose job it is to spend America's money. We have seen in the hours since that comment from the president, some Republicans come out and say, yep, this is a great idea. We're happy to do it.

3:09We'll cast the votes for that. And some conservatives saying, wait a minute, what are we talking about here? This is the exact kind of sort of socialistic redistribution of wealth that we used to complain about. And it is about one point three trillion dollars, as the president's described. The budget for the United States government in any given year is only about one point six trillion dollars. I mean, it is an astronomical amount of money. So that's a long way of answering your question to say this is technically, feasibly, theoretically possible. if Republicans have control of both chambers and the will to fight for it.

3:44But in sort of the real world where we all live, I think there is an almost zero percent chance of this ever happening. Is it legal? Because some Democrats are saying this is bribery. It's hard for me to see how it's illegal exactly. I mean, what the president is saying in his many words is that this is a policy that he and Republicans will pursue. He doesn't say it very artfully. But, you know, it's not it's not different, I don't think, legally from saying, you know, we'll cut your taxes by five thousand dollars if you send our Republican majorities back. Right. Like in some ways, that's kind of the same thing.

4:21It does sort of look and feel and smell like an inducement, especially when you look at the president's history, which is he offers these kinds of things all the time. But I think I think it's a long way to go to prove that this is illegal. But there's a lot of people saying this doesn't smell right. So the president also said, hey, listen, go to the polls in November and vote like I am on the ballot. Like, vote as if you were voting for me. Here is the thing. His numbers are not great right now. There's polling showing that even MAGA supporters don't necessarily approve as strongly of how the president is actually doing?

5:02Like, how is this strategy potentially going to play out with the president saying, pretend like I'm on the ballot? The theory behind this, and I'm not saying I subscribe to this theory, is twofold. Number one, there are a lot of voters who supported President Trump in 2024 who are what we call low propensity voters. They do not vote often. They maybe vote in a presidential election every now and then. They almost never vote in the midterms. The Trump political operation is desperate to convince those people to show up and vote at all. Some of them, I was told by a senior Republican strategist, don't even know that there is an election coming up, that they would have the opportunity to vote.

5:40So they're using the president as this like sort of big, shiny object to lure those people back out. Secondly, the theory goes, if Democrats are going to use Trump to drag down Republican candidates among the segments of the electorate with which he's unpopular, you know, independents, sort of softer Republican voters, they might as well use them to try to boost Republicans with the folks with whom he is popular, right? Like get some benefit on the margins. And so, you know, using him as a turnout machine to get hardcore Republicans out at least gives them, you know, some chance of being competitive.

6:13But look, and I think the whole thing is an acknowledgement that this is not the hand that Republicans would prefer to be playing in these midterms. What's the president's calculation when it comes to oil prices? Because he said essentially prices are going to go down after the election with now prices as of yesterday back up above$100 a barrel. Yeah, look, this is a mess for Republicans. It's hard to overstate how bad this is, especially when you think about what President Trump ran on, which was running to fight inflation, bring down costs. He promised at rallies that he would cut America's energy costs in half in a year.

6:48We're going the wrong direction for that. I mean, gas prices are up more than a dollar for where they were last year. Diesel prices are at a record. And these aren't just like prices that sort of float in the backgrounds of people's minds. These are prices that are on the side of the road, on the street where you live, all around this country. And so what I think you're seeing from the president and the people around him is a bit of wishful thinking, a bit of projection. Gas prices, in the words of the president and the Treasury secretary and other of his top officials, are always just about to come down.

7:19We've heard them say they're going to come down in a matter of weeks. And now they're saying, well, it'll be over when the war's over. Well, when's the war going to be over? Well, now the president says the war's not going to be over until after the election, which is probably closer to the ballpark than any other projection that he's been making. But what that means essentially is that there is no relief on the way for these high gas prices. And that's something that voters pay very close attention to. John Fetterman, sitting Democratic senator, right? Some Republicans not showing up, but Fetterman showing up in a video address.

7:49Why am I here talking to you today? Because, well, I'm a common sense Democrat. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes in socialism and that anti-American way of life. Dave McCormick is the kind of senator that gets the job done and he's going to fight for Pennsylvania. I'm proud to count him as my friend. So that was kind of a surprise for John Fetterman to be showing up, to say the least. He released a statement after that video came out and said, I am, in fact, not leaving the Democratic Party. but how are Democrats reacting to Fetterman showing up in that video address?

8:31Well, they're not happy, but also there's not a lot they can do here because the bigger concern for Senate Democrats is not what John Fetterman says in a video about Donald Trump. It's whether he shows up in a red jersey in a matter of weeks. If he were to switch parties, become an independent or become a Republican, ultimately one of the things Fetterman said in his statement defending this, which is true, is that he votes with Democrats the vast majority of the time. Stylistically and rhetorically, he has become a huge challenge for Democrats and a frustration to many people who voted for him expecting him to be more of a progressive.

9:04But he is still mostly voting with Democrats. The fear here is that by antagonizing someone who's clearly all over the map with his political positions and sort of the way he's approaching this job, based on all the public reporting that's out there, that if they antagonize him enough, they might push him right on out of the party. By the way, Garrett, you are jumping in headfirst to the podcast pool. You're doing more interviews about the midterms. We're actually launching a special at Here's the Scoop. We're gonna have a episode out every Saturday up until the midterm elections. Not like you had enough to do already.

9:40Who is up first this weekend, Garrett Hayes? Well, thank you for bringing this up. We have two great guests this week. We're trying to take kind of an opportunity with this first episode to take a 30 ,000-foot view at these midterms. On the Democratic side, we have California Congressman Pete Aguilar. He's the number three House Dem, and he's basically in charge of messaging for the Democratic Party. He is helping to craft the messages that all of these candidates are running on around the country, and we talk to him a lot about kind of how you find this balance between running against Donald Trump and what you're going to run for if you're a Democratic candidate and how they make those messages break through.

10:17On the Republican side, I'm particularly excited about this interview because we sat down with James Blair, who does not do a lot of interviews at all. He was a deputy campaign manager on the Trump campaign. Then he was a deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House. And now he runs MAGA Inc. That's the president's super PAC. He has$400 million and probably more coming in every week to spend all across the country on all of these races. And he was pretty candid with me in a way that I think was unusual and I think enlightening about how concerned the folks who are closest to this data really are about Republicans' chances of keeping power in Washington.

10:56Garrett Haig, I know it's going to be good because, of course, you're doing it and this team is doing it as well. I cannot wait to hear your first episode this Saturday, which, by the way, you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube as well on our Here's the Scoop channel. Garrett Haig, thank you. Thank you. All right, coming up. A researcher who quit anthropic is sounding the alarm on AI, saying that it poses an extreme threat to human existence. We're going to break down whether you should be concerned. That's up next. Also, while you're listening to the ads, make sure to subscribe so that you can get us every weekday and new episodes of Garrett's election special on the weekends, dropping every Saturday through November.

11:38I'll see you on the other side.

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13:22And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So is AI the tech that's going to save the world or is it actually going to end it? So this is a debate that we've been hearing for years. And there is a new AI doomer in town. This week, a researcher named Jacob Coxon went viral when he announced his resignation from the AI company Anthropic Onyx. Warning, the people that are actually building the AI systems believe that they could actually lead to human extinction in the next decade. But even still, they're moving ahead. Here he is talking to Tom Yamas on NBC News' top story last night. You truly believe that AI could kill us all in less than a decade?

14:04Yes, I do. And it's not just me. Many people working in the industry, including people, executives, senior researchers, all genuinely believe that there is a substantial probability that this technology could kill everyone. And this isn't hyperbole and it's not a marketing stunt. This is the genuine held belief of the people building the technology. So with that, I want to bring in NBC News AI reporter Jared Perlow, who's been all over this and has actually interacted with Jacob Coxon as well. Hi, Jared. Hello. Great to see you. So he's real, right? He's not an AI bot. He's a real person. He's a real person.

14:40He is a real person. We know that for sure. Confirmed. Confirmed. He is real. So he posted this kind of doomsday prediction on X, which got, I mean, 150 million views already. And then another researcher at Anthropic reposted it saying he's right, that this could lead to the extinction of mankind. So what is the evidence that Jacob Coxon is actually pointing to? Well, I think it's one of the critical questions here because a lot of this is extrapolating current AI trajectories several years into the future, several months for some people. But Jacob Coxon, in his original tweet, in the Slack messages that I got access to when he resigned from Anthropic and in his interview yesterday with Tom, he makes this point that AI capabilities are growing really quickly.

15:30We've seen them accelerate. I think humans really get used to things very, very quickly. You know, we acclimatize. But ChantGPT was released less than four years ago, and it's already pervasive in almost every aspect of daily life. Our AI is just everywhere. And he's basically pointing out, Jacob Cox, in that if we follow this trajectory of where AI is going, in just a couple of years, it could spiral out of control. And that's what's really scary. He said in his interview yesterday that there wasn't really any one concrete episode or piece of evidence that he saw internally at Anthropic or OpenAI where he worked previously that really freaked him out.

16:04But he said we're starting to see these capabilities. And I think the one thing that he really pointed to— But like what capabilities? Like what does he mean by that? Like, what capabilities is he seeing that could actually lead to human extinction? Right. Like, in the next decade, not in a century from now, literally in the next decade, which I think is also startling, the timeline of it all. So I think there's two things. One is this series of recent cyber attacks that we've seen conducted autonomously by AI systems. But then there's also this idea, I mean, he's working with the absolute cutting edge of AI.

16:35You know, these aren't the chatbots that we're interacting with. And what I think a lot of these researchers are most afraid of is this idea of what they call recursive self-improvement. So that means without human instructions, AI systems will be able to improve themselves autonomously. You know, now human software engineers, they have to be somewhat hands-on with the systems they're designing. But if AI can reach a point where it's better at diagnosing its own problems, where it thinks it should make its own improvement. So why do you need humans? Exactly. But then how do we die? Well, we die.

17:04There's a range of scenarios which, you know, get very stark in some ways. So I think there are broadly two main pathways that people think of. One is a situation in which humans are consuming resources or stand in the way of AI systems achieving their goals. You know, an AI system might come along and say, I want to build a fleet of robots, but all of the humans are taking the water, they're taking the electricity. Let me get rid of the humans. Let me get rid of these, you know, nuisances on the side. And then the other broad pathway I just want to mention is potentially the AI wouldn't be so driven or the death and destruction of humans wouldn't be its ultimate goal.

17:39But instead, it wants to achieve some task and then humans happen to be in the way. And so it's not programmed to care about humans at that point. So the analogy that AI safety researchers tell me is like, think about how humans interact with ants or an anthill. Stomp on it. Exactly. You're walking down the street. It's in your way. Maybe you don't see it. Maybe you do see it. But hey, it's just a pile of ants. I mean, personally, big ant fan. But there's also that possibility where, you know, the AI system isn't so dead set on snuffing out all of humanity. But, you know, we're just some sort of third party.

18:10They're not really thinking about us. And so that's what could, you know, lead an AI system to exterminate us or if not exterminate, then just cause like some severe cataclysmic catastrophe. Some people in the AI safety space think that, okay, we're not going to go extinct, but like 50 % of humanity, 70 % of humanity could die, billions of people, and they're obviously still very worried about that. And again, we're all saying this in a somewhat, I don't know, normal conversation, but people in these labs do actually think that this is possible. So what is now Coxon saying as to what can be done to stop it?

18:47It's a live debate, and I think a lot of people don't really know. We're building the rocket ship as we're flying it, and we don't have a way to steer it. That's kind of the metaphor that I like to use. So he quits because he wants to get the word out this is going to be a threat, but he doesn't necessarily know how to stop it? He doesn't. I think one of the key factors here is just the speed of AI development. In his resignation post, Jacob Coxon actually said, maybe things will sort themselves out where I can rejoin this effort in the early 2030s. So the idea that a lot of these people have is like they're not hopeless about AI as an endeavor.

19:21What they're really scared of is the speed. We're just barreling ahead. We have no idea where this technology is going. OpenAI's chief scientist described it as an alien mind just a couple days ago. So their idea is that we need to figure out a way to slow down. But there are all the wrong incentives in place because if one company decides to slow down, another company like OpenAI's rival Anthropic will surge ahead. Or if American companies slow down, Chinese companies will surge ahead. And so what Jacob Coxon and many of his colleagues say is that we need some sort of international framework, international agreement with, you know, binding teeth where we could actually slow down.

19:56Now, this flies in the face of a lot of the messaging we're hearing out of the White House, which has repeatedly said that we need to have a light-touch approach to AI regulation. Otherwise, we risk hamstringing and hampering American AI innovation. But you need a leader in order to slow down. And it seems like, though, this whole thing is filled with people that want more money and have huge egos that are trying to drive the AI race. Is that a fair assessment? So we've actually seen statements from the leading AI companies and their leaders, Dario Amadei, who's CEO of Anthropics, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Demis Hassabis, who's the leader of Google's DeepMind effort, their AI company.

20:36They've said in recent months that we need to slow down. They use this actually very fascinating word. They say we need to pace the development of AI. For some reason, you know, the word slow is they're allergic to it because it's probably not very interesting for their investors. But at the end of the day, talk is very cheap. And then the last thing that I'll just flag is there's a whole other camp that looks at all this debate and says, these guys are totally off their rocker. They're loonies. We just need to keep building chips. We need to forge ahead with AI because AI could cure cancer. It could have all these magical upsides.

21:08Why are you so concerned about these small, potentially real, but small risks of human extinction? We're seeing some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, by the way, that are calling for more AI regulation. The question, I think, is, like, do they even know how to regulate AI? And is there a real openness in Washington? I know that you have already talked to us about what the Trump administration has said, but is there a real openness in Washington to regulate AI? I think there is. And I'm really curious to see how this plays out over the next week. I mean, this tweet has really galvanized things.

21:45And beyond the tweet, I think kind of the wider reverberations. I mean, he's been on every major network. We're talking about it now. This really seems to have hit a nerve. So many senators are going to be talking about this. There's a call for, I think, bipartisan hearing in the next couple of days on this. There are currently AI bills on the floor of the House and on the floor of the Senate. They've been percolating for over a year now. Efforts from Senator Hawley, Senator Blumenthal, Bernie Sanders just came out with a new bill to ban artificial superintelligence. But you also have more practical proposals from people like Representative Jay Obernolte of California, Representative Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, to increase the transparency into what's actually happening behind closed doors at these frontier labs.

22:29That's been in committee for several months now. They proposed it at the beginning of the year. But it's kind of been percolating, I think, kind of waiting for some sort of opportunity to really gain traction. And I think this tweet might be the thing that does it. Yeah. Jared Perlow. Thank you? I mean, I don't know. So depressing. Good to be here. Thank you, Jared. All right, coming up. Americans are dominating at the U.S. Open. Can they end a decades-long drought? We're going to get the scoop from a former coach who helped players like Venus and Serena Williams. Stay with us.

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24:53And we're back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So the U.S. Open is on to the semifinal round, and the biggest headline of all seems to be that Americans are pretty good at tennis. Four of the remaining eight players are from the United States. For the women, that's Jessica Pagula, and Grand Slam winner Coco Gauff. They're playing tonight. You don't want to miss that. Then on the men's side, we have got Ben Shelton, Francis Tiafoe, who are going to face off against each other on Friday, which means that there's going to be an American in the finals no matter what. To be clear here, an American man has not won a Grand Slam title in 23 years.

25:30So could one of these guys finally end the drought? And could we even see the U.S. ace the Open altogether? For this, I'm joined by Hall of Fame tennis coach Rick Macy, who's worked with some of the GOATs, including, by the way, Serena and Venus Williams. Hey, Rick. Hi there. How are you doing? I'm good. It's great to have you. Listen, it has been a week, to say the least. You had a Grand Slam match finishing at 3.33 in the morning. I felt bad for the folks that were sitting in the stands, I gotta say. multiple matches ending in nail-biting tiebreakers. A new world number one woman was crowned as well.

26:08What has been your reaction so far to this U.S. Open? It's been the U.S. wide open, okay? It's been so fluid on both sides. It's kind of a jump ball. But if I back the truck up, let's start with the men first. Yannick Sinner, number one in the world. He didn't play because of a knee injury. So that gave everybody kind of some good hope that they would get on the other side of the draw. Then you had Carlos Alcarez, the Spanish magician, but he hadn't played in 139 days because of a wrist injury. So he walks into the Big Apple and said, I'm going to give it a shot. And listen, what he's done, even though he lost to Shelton 7-6 in the fifth in the quarters, it's unreal to be off that long and come back in men's tennis.

26:54He was really the talk of the tournament because of the curiosity factor. All right. But it has given hope to some Americans. They've done great on the men's side and the women's side. Okay, I want to talk matchups for a moment because the women's semis are tonight, and it's stacked, right? Coming into this tournament, four women were competing to take the world number one ranking. Now, while Elena Rabakina has already clinched that, all four of those women are now in the semis. So what does that say about how competitive women's tennis is right now? Yeah, it's very fluid. You know, anybody can beat anybody.

27:32There's actually about 20 players on the women's side that could go on there on any given day. But the seeds kind of held up on the women's side. Rabakina, you're right. She just became number one in the world. She has the best serve and has for a long time. She's number one. Sabalenka, the Belarusian bomber, she was number one for 99 weeks. Okay, now she drops to number two. Then you got the American Coco Gauff, whose backbone is better than her backhand. She's in the mix. And Jessica Pagula, you know, the Buffalo Blaster. So it's going to be exciting. And nothing would surprise me if any four of these won the tournament.

28:14But at the beginning, I'm going with the Delray Dart Coco Gauff. She is so resilient. And people need to give her more credit because she's the best athlete on the tour. That helps. but she's an unreal competitor and she's the youngest that's left in the tournament. It seems like she's been out there forever. She's 22 years old. Wow. You know, Robakan is 27, Sabalinka is 28, and Pagula is 32. So Coco is just getting started. Wow. And number one's around the corner for sure. I want to talk about the men's. So Francis Tiafoe, Ben Shelton, they have a huge opportunity. Ben Shelton knocked off defending champ Carlos Alcaraz.

28:55Tiafoe just had an amazing come from behind victory as well. You actually trained Andy Roddick, the last American man, to win a Grand Slam. What advice would you have for Tiafoe and Shelton going into this thing? Well, number one, for both of them, it's the biggest match of their life. And whoever wins and goes to the finals, that would all become the biggest match of their life. Have fun. Enjoy the moment. You know, this is a shot of a lifetime. They're pretty even. It could go either way. I don't think there's really a favorite. So it wouldn't surprise me. Either one could win the match. So I think what is so cool about this moment, and we talked about this at the beginning, is we could have Americans win for both the men and the women in the U.S.

29:43Open and take it all. The last time we actually saw something like that was in 2003. I think it was Andre Agassi and Serena Williams winning the Australian Open. Is it going to happen again? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, things are looking pretty good. But what does this say about kind of the next era of American tennis? Well, with the women first, there's a lot of depth. There's a lot of very good players. But once again, that's different than rare air, you know, like Venus, Serena. That's a whole different level. It's one thing to kind of get there, but can you stay there? And like Pagula, she's been in the top five for a long time, but never won a Grand Slam.

30:28She's 32 years old. But there's a lot of depth on the men's and women's side. But to go to that ultimate level, okay, that's a different animal. But definitely Coco could trend in that direction. I don't see anybody else that's that. But it's a long-term process. And as you know, things change very quickly. Rick Macy, thank you. Got it.

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