“Science of the AI Mind” & Ron Baron 9/16/26

16 Sep 2026 · 59 min · 32 chapters

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In short

The episode mixes market/news commentary with a deep discussion of AI risk and cognition, plus an extended interview with Ron Baron on Tesla, SpaceX, and “agentic” AI driving demand for satellites, data centers, and energy.

Guests (who they are)

  1. Ron Baron: Founder/CEO/portfolio manager of Barron Capital; long-time investor in Elon Musk companies. He says Barron Partners Fund has been #1 mutual fund since 2003.
  2. Cameron Berg: AI researcher; director of Reciprocal Research, a nonprofit studying AI cognition. He wrote a Wall Street Journal piece calling for a “science of the AI mind.”

Key claims

  • Berg: AI internals are not understood; systems may be “grown” neural networks in an ambiguous zone between algorithm and cognition, so we need scientific monitoring.
  • Baron: Tesla’s FSD adoption is accelerating; robots are “dystopian” but less central to his thesis than cars, batteries, and energy/SpaceX synergies.
  • Baron: Starlink/“agentic agents” will require far more satellites (he cites a shift toward ~100,000) and massive compute demand; he predicts data centers in space by 2027.

Notable examples

  • Baron’s Tesla self-driving story: the car stops for a duck and ducklings, then continues to park at a breakfast spot.
  • Berg’s analogy: AI research should study internal neural activity like brain research, but with different interpretability limits.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Current Market Insights

0:32 to 0:52

Hosts discuss current energy prices and their implications.

“including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.”

Current Market Insights

2:16 to 3:38

Hosts discuss current energy prices and their implications.

“Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC.”

Corporate Views on AI

3:38 to 5:26

Discussion on corporate leaders' perspectives about AI regulations.

“Speaking with CNBC's Jim Cramer, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Wang saying that U.S.”

Debating AI's Nature

5:26 to 7:17

Exploration of whether AI can be considered to have a mind.

“This is all happening without really recursive self-improvement.”

The Future of AI

7:17 to 10:49

Concerns about the rapid development of AI and its societal impact.

“three months is when these big changes have really taken place to the point that it's concerned some of these leaders.”

Cryptocurrency Legislation Update

10:49 to 13:09

Analysis of recent cryptocurrency legislation and market reactions.

“I keep thinking, you know, we talked yesterday and we've spent a lot of time talking about how science fiction, Arthur C.”

Introducing Ron Barron

13:09 to 14:03

Introduction to Ron Barron and his views on Tesla and robotics.

“And the flip side is whether you like the bill or not.”

Introducing Ron Barron

15:11 to 15:37

Introduction to Ron Barron and his views on Tesla and robotics.

“in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.”

Ron Barron's Investment Insights

16:06 to 17:14

Discussion on Barron's significant holdings in SpaceX and Tesla.

“You've been talking to us for a long time, since before you even owned any Elon Musk companies.”

Ron Barron's Tesla Experience

17:14 to 20:24

Barron shares a personal story showcasing the capabilities of Tesla's self-driving feature.

“So when we started our business, had$10 million under management in 1982, $100 million in 92, in June it was$69 billion.”
Show all 32 chapters

Market Analysis of Tesla

20:24 to 23:08

Discussion on Tesla's market position and future prospects amid competition.

“I want the S, though, this new wine-colored S.”

Elon Musk's Vision and Personal Investments

23:08 to 24:24

Barron discusses his investments and Elon Musk's innovative vision.

“And everywhere in the world, it's incredible.”

Tesla's Technological Innovations

24:24 to 27:07

Exploration of Tesla's technological advancements beyond cars, including robots.

“and I didn't have enough credit to buy a telephone.”

Insights on SpaceX

27:07 to 28:00

Barron shares insights and excitement regarding SpaceX's operations and future.

“I only recommended one person ever to SpaceX as an employee.”

Introduction to SpaceX Discussion

28:00 to 28:30

Exploration of recent insights and excitement surrounding SpaceX.

“And so she says that they asked me to do that.”

Cost Revolution in Space Travel

28:30 to 29:50

Discussion on the dramatic decrease in costs for launching payloads into space.

“Well, SpaceX, people sort of viewed it as a rocket company.”

Starlink's Potential for Growth

29:50 to 31:00

Analysis of Starlink's projected growth and revenue potential.

“But there's no low Earth orbit satellites.”

Agentic Demand and Satellite Expansion

31:00 to 32:50

Exploration of the need for increased satellite capacity due to new demand trends.

“And then they would be$700 or$800 of EBITDA.”

Telcos and Market Capitalization Issues

32:50 to 34:30

Examining the challenges and market strategies of telecommunications companies.

“And every five years, you deorbit the satellites that are in space then, and you're going to get 10 times the power when you put up new satellites.”

Government Regulation and Telco Practices

34:30 to 36:20

Discussion on government intervention and practices of telecom monopolies.

“The communications cartel, they put out a press release that says that we are talking to figure out how we're going to price the satellite communications that we need, because they don't have it.”

Future of Spectrum and SpaceX's Strategy

36:20 to 38:20

Speculation on how SpaceX will navigate spectrum usage and competition.

“But the bottom line is that the government, they forced EchoStar to sell their business because EchoStar was just a cumulating spectrum.”

Legal Landscape for Telcos

38:20 to 39:55

Insights into the legal challenges faced by telecommunication companies.

“How are they not going to do it with someone?”

Inflation and Market Investment

39:55 to 40:50

Ron Baron discusses inflation's impact on market investments and buying power.

“And the one thing you learn in law school is the best lawyers always win.”

Data Centers in Space

40:50 to 42:00

Exploration of the potential for data centers to be established in space.

“So basically, all around the country, people are upset about data centers.”

Exploring the Future of AI Power and Profitability

42:00 to 45:11

Learn about the massive growth potential in AI infrastructure and profitability.

“I mean, he always says, I always do what I say.”

Ron Baron's Investment Insights

45:11 to 46:31

Discover Ron Baron's insights on investment opportunities in AI and energy.

“It costs$50 billion for other people,$25 billion for us.”

Introduction to AI Mind Discussion

46:31 to 46:50

Introduction to Cameron Berg and the upcoming discussion on AI capabilities.

“Up next, how should we think about the evolving capabilities of AI?”

Introduction to AI Mind Discussion

47:29 to 47:59

Introduction to Cameron Berg and the upcoming discussion on AI capabilities.

“At Venture Global, we think about what can be done, not what's usually done.”

Introduction to AI Mind Discussion

48:05 to 48:25

Introduction to Cameron Berg and the upcoming discussion on AI capabilities.

“including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.”

Understanding the AI Mind and Its Implications

48:31 to 56:00

Explore the complexities of AI cognition and the need for a science of AI mind.

“AI researcher Cameron Berg doesn't think we're all doomed necessarily from AI, but says the systems are being built faster than the science that can help us to understand exactly what's going on.”

Concerns About AI and Its Implications

56:00 to 1:02:24

Discussing the complexities and dangers of AI systems and the need for understanding their mechanisms.

“This is, I think, back to the point of the simple fact is we are building out incredibly powerful systems that even the people building do not understand how they work internally.”

Concerns About AI and Its Implications

1:03:17 to 1:03:37

Discussing the complexities and dangers of AI systems and the need for understanding their mechanisms.

“Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00With the Discover Cashback Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5 % cash back at different categories each quarter on up to$1 ,500 in purchases. That's 5 % cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to Discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash 5 for details. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading.

0:45Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts. Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The billionaire who made, well, billions from Elon Musk, Ron Barron. The 71 billion in profits, 30 billion came from Elon, 40 billion from other people. But Barron Partners Fund, in part because of Elon Musk, It's the number one mutual fund in the United States since 2003 when it became a fund. The case for and against a SpaceX Tesla tie-up. Anything he says is better, I'm supporting.

1:28I gave him reasons why both it's good and why it's not good. What are those reasons? I don't want to say. Plus robots, data centers in space and ducks? Then how smart and how like us are the new crew of artificial intelligence? It's not clear whether or not what's happening inside them should count as, quote unquote, real cognition or real thinking, or if this is just sort of an incredibly fancy algorithm. AI researcher Cameron Berg says it's the mind of AI that should worry us. It does the leaders of companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. They understand how powerful this technology is. They understand what the scaling laws are.

2:05And they are terrified about it because we are building systems whose internals we do not understand. All that plus the rest of today's news. It's Wednesday, September 16th, 2026. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Zorkin. And then energy prices. Yeah, filled your tank up this week. You know what's happening with energy prices. WTI this morning is off by about one and a half percent.

2:43It's sitting at 104.21 a barrel. Brent's close to$108 a barrel. AAA says that diesel prices now stand at$6.31 a gallon. That's almost a dollar more than it was a month ago. That's the price that might you would anticipate trickle through to things like consumer discretionary items, everything that gets shipped by trucks. A gallon of gasoline now stands at 437 on average. And well-known petroleum analyst Tom Closa, posting on X yesterday, he said, the next 24 hours will see staggering increases at the pump for both gasoline and diesel. Fuel margins have yet to catch up with previous wholesale hikes.

3:25Watch for huge increases in the Great Lakes and Rocky Mountain states in particular. So you can check this out yourself as you drive into work today. Corporate leaders expanding on their views about AI in the midst of a round of now fear over that technology. Speaking with CNBC's Jim Cramer, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Wang saying that U.S. businesses don't need any more government imposed rules of the road. The fact that we need new laws, new antitrust laws or new regulations so that these companies could do their fundamental engineering and do do it properly before they release products. That is just completely unnecessary.

4:02And I think that that's what the president is saying, that we don't need new laws. We don't need. Yeah, we don't need new. We got plenty of laws. We have plenty of regulations. He told a Salesforce conference that companies should move as fast as they can, but pause if they feel they're out of control. Now, Vidian Salesforce announced a new reasoning model yesterday for Salesforce's AgentForce platform. Meanwhile, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg weighed in. His stance appears to be more closely aligned with Jensen's. In a post on X, Zuckerberg said people won't want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don't do what they ask.

4:38So labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned. By the way, meanwhile, I don't know if you saw Dario Amadei was also at the Salesforce conference, standing right next to Mark and said the opposite. Let's make our practices better. Let's recommit transparency. Let's invest more in safety. Then let's organize the rest of the industry and say, what can we do to set standards for everyone? What can we do to make everyone's standards better? And then finally, there should be an international component to it. And that's essentially the three-step plan that I laid out in the essay, the first of which we committed to and the others of which we're going to have a dialogue with the rest of the industry about.

5:25And I think that's the way to lead the industry forward, to set an example, to say that everyone can always be better. so it was fascinating to sort of see the back and forth between all of them really wish i knew who's right no who who do any of us ever act you know uh if it's not that ain't self-interest self-interest this wish we could filter it all out and just know you know the journal today The humans are to blame for AI failures. This is all happening without really recursive self-improvement. We're not, you know, that's something that we don't even know if that's eventually going to happen.

6:08Just the closed loop where it just keeps happening and improving more and more and more. It's still AI-assisted. AI-assisted AI R &D, I guess they call it. We're going to have the guy on, Cameron Burke. Good, good. But if we're already using words, this guy, I'm going to ask him, Kimber, you use the word mind. Is it really a mind? Is that anthropomorphizing? Like we do with dogs and stuff when I say, oh, he's really mad at blah, blah. I don't know. And I don't know if we really should be using the word brain at this point for these things. I don't know. Is it really emotion? It's trying to mimic what we do.

6:46Right. That's what it's trying to do. It's not there yet, is it? Or is it? I don't know. That's the point, though. But it is trying to. He so totally says it is. If you read that again and again, it's like they got desperate. They wanted to cheat. They they were using subterfuge. Yes. What they were doing was copying. And we could talk to him about it. It's effectively trying to copy the way we. If we're not there yet and it's already doing that. Then what happens when they really don't need humans for any. And the terrifying thing is how quickly it's happening. For any self-improvement. three months is when these big changes have really taken place to the point that it's concerned some of these leaders.

7:22I hear your point about not knowing if they're ever not moving and if any of us can act without self-interest. I mean, Jensen, it's not hard to think about, probably. Right, Jensen, he sees where things are going. But what I will say, look, I had an off-camera conversation with Walter Isaacson the other day when he was here, and he emphasized, again, the point that all three of these guys, or particularly Dario, Amode, and Altman, have put themselves at risk by coming out and say, we know these problems that exist. That puts them at huge legal risk if bad things happen down the road. You knew this and you didn't do anything to stop it.

7:56Back to the partisan nature of things and whether this is a psyop. The Post just comes out and puts the pictures of the group that Dario says he wants to oversee things and says the woke wizards of AI. And I don't know if you can tell from photographs, but I don't know what you can glean. But the post seems to think that you can read something into it at this point. NVIDIA CEO, we talked about Jensen Wang, is expected to attend a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping when he visits President Trump in Washington next week. According to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to CNBC, AI is expected to be a main topic of discussion between the two world leaders.

8:53That's been a big question, whether they'd get into it. Wang was part of a group of CEOs that accompanied President Trump to China, you might recall, earlier this year. But of course, the big thing is you hear the president talk about how we need to be ahead of China on AI more than anything else. And if that actually is true, then there's a question about whether we should be providing any chips to them at all. Yeah. I mean, that's, if this is this sort of fight of a lifetime. Right. The alternative that you'll hear from Jensen Wong, admittedly speaking, admittedly speaking, his book is that...

9:30It's going to force Huawei to do it and everyone else will get there eventually. And you will lose, you will no longer be the world's supplier of these things. and then we lose our national... Well, I think the big debate is going to be who we're really supposed to fear. Do we fear that one of our enemies gets ahead of us and they're the ones that hack our water supply and they're the ones that do the cyber attacks and they're the ones that design the pathogen and they become the superpower of the world? Or is it AI itself that does it? And that's what they keep arguing about. Do we want someone else to get there first so they can do all these horrific things to us?

10:09Or do we really believe AI? I read that piece again, and it says we need to design these agents so that they're, like, moral and happy and want to help humanity. It's observant. We need to design them to be observant, basically. That they're not, like, troublemakers sort of banding together in a swarm to screw the humans. It just is also bizarre to talk to talk about it. And I just wonder, I guess we don't need to worry about if we're rushing it, because if it's not here now, it's going to be here. All these discussions will be probably more accurate in five years. My God, what are we talking about?

10:50I keep thinking, you know, we talked yesterday and we've spent a lot of time talking about how science fiction, Arthur C. Clark and others have been predicting this for a long time. Asimov. All the agents have read all that material, too. You know, they've trained on that material, so they know those scenarios as well. It's not just us who know those things. On this vote, the yeas are 49 and the nays are 50. Three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative. The motion is not agreed to. Bitcoin falling about 4 percent yesterday. That's after the regulatory bill dubbed the The Clarity Act failed to pass a procedural Senate vote.

11:30Coinbase and Circle both fell more than 10 percent. The Clarity Act is designed to establish a framework for cryptocurrency dividing oversight between the SEC and the CFTC. Republican leaders added new ethics restrictions to address Democratic concerns about public officials profiting from crypto ventures. But those changes weren't enough to resolve remaining opposition. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong spoke with CNBC after the vote. At this point, I don't think we can wait on Congress and the Senate. It's in our interest at this point to go work directly with the SEC and the CFTC. And chairs Atkins and Selig at the SEC and CFTC have made it clear that they have, under their existing authority, all the tools they need to go publish clear rules for crypto.

12:16They've even said publicly, I think, their intention to go out there and start the rulemaking process right away. And effectively, the idea that Congress by not, and look, it's not, I was going to say, by not approving this, have they abdicated their responsibility? But what they're going to do effectively sounds like is leave it up to the SEC and CFTC, at least in the short term, to try to figure things out. And then the question is whether they'll like or not like what the SEC and CFTC do or the rules of the road they come up with and whether they'll come back to all of this. I think the bigger issue is that by not having this go through Congress, it is not encased in cement.

12:56The SEC and the CFTC can put rules on it. But in two years, a new administration, SEC and CFTC can change those rules. I think it's unnerving as an investor to not know what's going to happen. And if Congress were to have passed this, if you make it through Congress and it becomes law, a lot harder to change than than just new people. And the flip side is whether you like the bill or not. Yeah. And clearly there's enough people who don't like the bill. Yeah. That's about Trump's one point four billion dollar profit in crypto. Right. Not a single Democratic vote. Tees will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, one of Elon Musk's biggest supporters, mutual fund billionaire Ron Barron.

13:41He's been betting on Tesla and SpaceX for many years, but he's not fully sold on the robots. It's pretty bizarre. They walk around 70 feet tall and they do all sorts of chores. And then when they run out of energy, they go over to a charging post and hoist themselves up and charge themselves. It's really dystopian. Plus data centers in space in the next year. Our extended conversation with investing legend Ron Barron right after this. Never bet against American grit or American energy. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time.

14:26So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

14:56and gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash five for details. This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and And subscribe at schwab.com slash market update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

15:37You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick. Welcome back, everybody, to Squawk Box. We have a very special guest joining us on set for the next half hour. Ron Barron is the founder, the CEO and portfolio manager of Barron Capital. Ron has long backed Elon Musk, first becoming a shareholder of SpaceX back in 2017. We've had him on lots of times to talk about Tesla, SpaceX and much more. Ron, I want to welcome you and thank you for taking the time to sit down with us today. Thank you for inviting me again. Yeah. You've been talking to us for a long time, since before you even owned any Elon Musk companies.

16:13You made me famous. Well, I don't know about that. It's amazing. You made me famous. I walked down the street and people recognized me because of your program. It's amazing. Not just in this country, in Asia, Italy. It's amazing. Thank you. Well, now it's Elon Musk who is really spreading your fame. And I looked at your holdings and I've kind of known this over time. You have$25 billion worth of SpaceX shares, at least according to the latest holdings we've seen as of the end of June. That's$3 billion more than NVIDIA has. Wow. And$5 billion in Tesla. So that's more than$30 billion in assets under management in those two stocks.

16:50I look at your next 13 stocks, and it's companies we've known for a long time that you've talked to us about, Hyatt, MCSI, Spotify, Charles Schwab. But all of those next 13 stocks combined, your holdings, are only about$15.5 billion. So you are really an Elon Musk proxy at this point in terms of what you've done? A lot of that's been because the shares you've bought have risen so dramatically in price. So when we started our business, had$10 million under management in 1982, $100 million in 92, in June it was$69 billion. And we made our clients$71 billion in profits. Of the$71 billion in profits, $30 billion came from Elon,$40 billion from other people.

17:33But Barron Partners Fund, And in part because of Elon Musk is the number one mutual fund in the United States since 2003 when it became a fund. Not one percent. Number one out of all the funds. Tell us what you think about where things stand with Tesla, where things stand with SpaceX. You've been a longtime booster. So before we get into the SpaceX and AI and satellites, I just want to give you one little story about Tesla. And so they made a car, the Model S, and they stopped making it. And they had 250 more that they made that were special, cost twice as much as the ones they had before. And I bought one of them.

18:18And all the cars have self-driving. If you want it, you pay$100 a month. And so we have one out in East Hampton. And it is my favorite car I've ever had. It's a picture of the front of our quarterly report. And on Sunday mornings, we go to breakfast in a little joint in East Hampton. And we have pancakes and French toast and cereal and orange juice. And I overslept on Sunday morning. So I said, oh, my God. I'm looking at no one's here. So I take a quick shower, run out to my car that's in the garage. I didn't remember the address. I pushed the name of the restaurant we're going to. Then it says self-driving.

19:03It opens up my garage door, pulls out backwards, drives around my driveway, which is really long, opens up the gate to front of the property, opens it up, drives a little bit more to the street, looks both ways, pulls onto the street, makes a left-hand turn, goes for two blocks, makes a right-hand turn, goes for two blocks, then makes a left-hand turn. And I'm not even paying attention. Makes a left-hand turn and all of a sudden stops short. I say, oh my God, did I break something? And then I look out and I'm watching the front of the car and there's a large duck walking across the road with six little ducklings behind it.

19:42It stopped for the ducks. and then the ducks pass. The car starts up again, goes to Main Street, makes a right, goes into the parking lot and parks right next to the restaurant that was having breakfast. Stop for ducks. This car is unbelievable. My sons have driven from New York to here. You drive in New York. You have to try this car. I'm getting you a car to try if you want it. We're going to do it. It's amazing. Not for me, but... Everyone's going to want it and he says it's like driving a horse and buggy if you don't have this at some point and your son is going to be, this is great for children.

20:16Children have to learn to drive. Such a worry. I don't want him to worry about it. Him worry about it. Don't worry about this stuff anymore. This is really cool. You've got to have it. So that's Tesla. SpaceX. I want the S, though, this new wine-colored S. That's what I got. That's what you. But there's. If you really want me to get one. Well, they made 250 of them. Yeah. There's no more. But in the market, they're now selling for used board a lot more than I actually paid for it. And I paid twice what the Essence are. So I'm never selling it. What would that be? $200? $160,$170, something like that.

20:55That's twice what it went for? It went for$80. Are you supposed to be driving it without paying attention? I thought the rules were still technically that you were supposed to be the driver. Well, you sort of look around. And if it makes a shaking sound, you pick up the wheel and you start driving again. but you don't really need it. And driving at night in the Hamptons, it's dark and there's not lights. It sees more than you do. Yeah, much better than you do. So SpaceX and Tesla, I assume you want to talk about that, and AI, assume you want to talk about that. Well, before we do, let's talk about all of those things.

21:27But let's also talk about what people are looking in value in Tesla at right now. And there's a huge question as to whether Elon Musk is going to wrap Tesla into SpaceX, buy it. But he was even asked that in a podcast yesterday, I think that he and Gwen were on yesterday or the day before. And he kind of didn't knock the idea down. How do you feel as somebody who owns, you know,$25 billion worth of SpaceX and more than$5 billion worth of Tesla? How do you feel about SpaceX making a bid for Tesla and wrapping it in? I told him that I gave him reasons why I thought it was good and why I thought it wasn't.

22:07And I said that I'm not someone who makes a decision. You're the guy. And whatever you decide is better is what I'm going to support. And so anything he says is better, I'm supporting. And I gave him reasons why both it's good and why it's not good. What are those reasons? I don't want to say.

22:28By now, the prediction was inroads would be occurring with the other automakers into Tesla's market share in the United States. Now, just a couple of days ago, it came out Tesla's market share is increasing again because a lot of the legacy makers are not going to go in full in on the EV. So suddenly it's Tesla. And to buy a Tesla, you may not. The other ones need to buy them just to migrate to EV with a Tesla. You just want to own a Tesla. They lost billions of dollars. Other people. And they just try to do shortcuts. So it's on the upswing again. Yeah. The Tesla market share. Market share. And in Europe, it's incredible.

23:09And everywhere in the world, it's incredible. Everywhere. So they're the best. Because you might not want an EV. You might want a Tesla. I don't want to spend too much time on Tesla, but I think Tesla is the time to buy the stock is now. All this FSD is catching on, and it's going to be bigger and bigger and bigger. And this is going to drive, you know, they have a million, a million, four people. Now we're on this driving, they're growing 55 % overall, increase a year. And everyone, 55 % of the new people they're getting are buying this with a self-drive. and it's going to be everywhere. Are you buying more if you think this is the time or do you think you're overexposed or at least just as exposed as you want to be?

23:54I have$30 billion investment. Yeah. 25 and five. It's a huge amount of year. That's enough. But personally, the biggest investments I have are SpaceX, which is about$5 billion and then a billion and a half. Personally. Personally. Yeah. A billion and a half in Tesla and about$1.8 billion in our mutual funds, which is pretty cool considering that in 1970, my net worth was minus$15 ,000 and I didn't have enough credit to buy a telephone. On the Tesla piece, how much of your thesis at this point rests on the cars versus the humanoid robots? I'm not giving a lot to the robots, although he thinks that's going to be bigger than anything he has.

24:42but I'm not you know he's going to start making them and when you see them it's pretty bizarre they walk around seven feet tall and they do all sorts of chores and then and then when they run out of energy they go over to a charging post and hoist themselves up and charge themselves it's really dystopian but so your thesis on in terms of Tesla is more just on on the underlying car business as opposed to the the future Well, there's lots of technology they have. They have batteries that are really important. And then they have, so energy is a big deal. And then they're partners with SpaceX in a new facility that's going to make, it's a 100 million square foot facility.

25:31The Pentagon, I think, is 5 million square feet. And there's 100 million square feet, and Intel is a partner. It's really interesting that the head of Intel, who I guess President Trump thought was a really important person to turn around that company. Yeah, Haktan. Yeah, Haktan. He came to visit, and I said, and we spoke for an hour, hour and a half. I said, how do you like working with Elon? He says, well, he has a lot of ideas. And I said, so what's it like being with him? And I said, well, he came to visit me in Oregon, and other people come and they walk around, they see our facility, they're there for an hour and a half, and they leave.

26:05Elon gets there and he's there for four and a half hours. And he has engineers one after another, after another, come in to talk to him about any questions about everything. And that was one thing. And then a woman comes to talk to us and she is the 30 under 30 for Forbes. And she's just invented this electric boat and it flies above the border. It's military and commercial use. And she says, it shows me a picture of Elon behind the steering wheel. and so I said, well, how'd you like hanging out with him? He said, really interesting. He drove our boat for a bit and then what he did is he said, you take over and he walks out to the deck and he lies down on the deck and he listens to the engines and he's lying there listening to the engines and just like every single thing he's curious about and every single thing he wants to know and understand and how he can make it better.

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26:57That's his personality. Just everything. He said perfection. So, and people want to work with him. He gets the best people. So he has, what, 130, 140 ,000 people and 30 ,000 new hires a year and 6 million or 5 million people apply for 30 ,000 jobs. He's got the best. I only recommended one person ever to SpaceX as an employee. And it took them, I don't know, nine months before she got hired. And the last role she had, she was interviewed by the former head of NORAD, General. I was 65 years old. And I said, so what did he ask you? And he says, well, she says, well, he asked me how I would design a satellite and how I would design a network.

27:46And I said, you're 22. How can you answer a question like that? And she had worked at Raytheon before, and she had been recruited in Chile by the chairman of Raytheon. And it was across the driveway, and they didn't give her enough to do. And so she says that they asked me to do that. And I said, how'd you do that? And she said, well, I did it. And then I got the job. And I talked to her every time I go to California now. I meet with her for breakfast or for lunch or something. And amazing person. So but let me talk to you about. Let's talk about SpaceX. OK, that you have done a deep dive recently on SpaceX, a lot of research, a lot of meetings, digging into it.

28:27Explain to us what you've learned and, I guess, what excites you most about the company right now. Well, SpaceX, people sort of viewed it as a rocket company. And it's a rocket company because they can get to space more cheaply than anyone else. And NASA said that in 2010, to get to space would cost you$18 ,700 to get to space to get a kilogram into orbit. $18 ,700 in 2010. That's because you can only use a rocket one time. And then starting in 2017, we started with a Falcon 9, adjusting it over and over and over again. And when we did that, we reduced the cost to get the space to$2 ,700 a kilogram instead of$18 ,500.

29:15And now with a heavy, it's now cost you$1 ,500 per kilogram. We charge other people$3 ,000 a kilogram, but it costs us$1 ,500. And now when we have the new rocket, it's going to cost somewhere around$100 or$150. So remember, it costs$18 ,000,$18 ,700. It's now about to cost$100,$150. So before, in 2010, the only people who could use space were governments. They're the only people who made commercial sense for governments. And also, if you put up a giant$2 billion satellite, it gets broadcast. But there's no low Earth orbit satellites. So now what's happened is that the big enabler is our new rocket.

30:01And it's the largest ever of anything. And it's going to be, I guess, 20 times as much as we have before. That's how come we get the cost so low. And when we do that, all of a sudden, we are going to have, let's just talk about Starlink for a second. So Starlink, that is the internet for the entire planet. That means everywhere you are, there's no dead areas. You're in the air, you're on the ocean, you're in the mountains, you're on the desert. Everywhere, there's no dead areas. That's what the internet is. That's what Starlink is. And so we were planning, SpaceX was planning, and going from 10 ,000 satellites to 20 ,000 satellites.

30:45And I thought that the revenues, which last year were$18 billion for SpaceX, SpaceX, they could be a trillion dollars for just Starlink in 10 years. So I thought it was going to go from, say, 15, 14 or 15 billion dollars out of the 18 to a trillion over 10 years. And then they would be$700 or$800 of EBITDA. And they would be worth somewhere around 14 or 15 trillion dollars. SpaceX overall for everything now is worth less than 2 trillion. So 2 trillion to 14 trillion just for that. And now what's really interesting about that is that we thought we were going to go from 10 ,000 to 20 ,000 satellites.

31:27Now he's changed that. It's now 100 ,000 satellites. How come? Because the revenues that we thought would be obtained from the satellites, from Starlink, were going to be from 30%, 35%. You're going to go from 15 million customers to 300 million over 10 years. is 3 billion people don't have the internet on the planet, and 5 billion is unsatisfactory. So 3 billion, 300 million is where I thought it was going to be. But that's only about 30 or 35 % of the revenues that you're going to be getting of this trillion dollars in revenues. Where's the rest of it coming from? The rest is coming from the government, from enterprise, and from mobile.

32:09That's where you get the trillion dollars from. And you get that in 10 years. So I said, wow, that's pretty cool. But what's really amazing is that Elon has now been saying that what is going to overwhelm everything are agentic agents. So you're going to want to have someone do something for you. You're going to go to LLM. You're going to get your agents, say, do this, do this, do this, do this. And you're going to have them working 24 hours a day for you. So what is going to be mammoth are going to be these robots, these agents are going to be doing all your chores. That's what's happening. So instead of having a trillion dollars of revenues in 10 years from this 10 ,000, 20 ,000 satellites, you're going to need 100 ,000.

32:55And every five years, you deorbit the satellites that are in space then, and you're going to get 10 times the power when you put up new satellites. So you're having massive amounts of increase in capacity that's going to be necessary because of all the agentic use that you're generating. OK, so you say, well, there's telcos that are doing this. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Does that assume you take the market capitalization of all the telcos? The telcos market caps are, you know, 100, 150 billion apiece or something. There's only three of them. It's a monopoly. It's a monopoly. You know, we invested in 1999 in Sotheby's.

33:37And the chairman of Christie's and the chairman of Sotheby's conspired to price together. And when they did, the chairman of Christie's left the country and he couldn't be extradited from England. And the chairman of Sotheby's went to jail. We were big investors in that company. That was the biggest loss I ever had. So we invested$500 million,$20 a share. It went to a billion. Then we sold it at half the price we paid for it, 250 million is the biggest loss ever. The biggest loss I ever had, though, that's why I always thought that was it. It was really not investing in Amazon, who I was trying to get to buy Sotheby's.

34:11But the idea was that here you have this opportunity for price fixing. Is that what you're suggesting the telcos are doing? Yes. Not only are they suggesting it, they did a press release that they did it. This Verizon, AT &T, and T-Mobile, they put out a press release that we, that's the monopoly, that's the whole country, it's a cartel. The communications cartel, they put out a press release that says that we are talking to figure out how we're going to price the satellite communications that we need, because they don't have it. So basically, they could not possibly have foreseen agentic demand coming for communications.

34:57didn't see it. And so they haven't been investing. All they want to do is they want to keep their existing customers and they want to be able to retire and they want to pay a dividend. And that's what they're doing. They're not risking anything. You think that the satellite wireless is eventually going to wipe out all of the cable and the fiber that they've laid in the ground? They have, well, it costs$16 ,000. That's a big accusation to say price-fix. It costs$16 ,000. But they said it. They said it. Look at the press release. It costs$16 ,000 a mile to put wire in the ground. And then when it breaks, you have no idea how you find it.

35:33$16 ,000 a mile. Biden felt it was very important to have a program to be able to get communications into the mountains. And so our desert everywhere. So he gave incentives and unions to allow that to continue. As opposed to spending$400 or$500 for an antenna, you push it at the sky. You point at the sky and it works. That's your mobile. The big question about that has always been big cities, suburbs that are closed. So the value that they have is the spectrum. That's what the telcos have. They have spectrum. And so basically, but that's a public good. So basically that's been given to them or they got it in auction.

36:13But there's a lot of spectrum that you can buy. They have these auctions regularly. Right, but then the question is, does... That's their value. Does SpaceX then have to invest meaningfully in massive infrastructure inside a city to get line of sight? They say no. They say that they have small cells. But the bottom line is that the government, they forced EchoStar to sell their business because EchoStar was just a cumulating spectrum. And they thought it was going to be valuable and they were right. But they say you don't have a plan to use it. You can't just keep that and bankroll. You think you're going to get rich on that.

36:49So they forced them to sell to SpaceX. Now what's going to happen, in my opinion, is that I think the government is going to come around to these telcos and say, Hennison, guys, you can't just keep that spectrum when you're not going to be able to use it. And we need it. Even if that's right, the multiple that telcos historically have traded on is so meaningfully lower than what SpaceX trades at. Of course, it's like a bond. Right. And so the question, though, is if SpaceX effectively gets the same business that was a telco business or a cable business. I'm describing to you how demand is going to be huge relative to what anyone could have ever imagined.

37:28And they're going to make high 70 % margins on that business is what's coming. And when I'm talking about a trillion dollars in revenues and seven or eight hundred billion, This is just Starlink,$700 or$800 billion of EBITDA worth$14 or$15 trillion. What kind of capex do you think that's going to require, for example, to build out New York City? They're not going to build out New York City. They can rent the spectrum that the telcos have. They can rent it from them, or they can do it with small sales, they think. But the bottom line is they are experimenting this summer with new satellites that your phone is going to go direct.

38:05But it still doesn't get through walls and doesn't get to bathrooms in the middle of a building. So basically, they're going to have to do something else. But the government, I believe, I can't. You think they're going to force the telcos to do business with them? Yes. The government will say that. That's my theory. I don't. I haven't heard other people say that. But they did it with Echo Store. How are they not going to do it with someone? And when you use, you know, in the summertime, if you use Spectrum and you're using it, use your mobile at a certain time of day, the reception is terrible.

38:38It's slow. They can't compete without this huge increment in demand. So this increment in demand, what are they going to do when you're going to go from all these people going to want it all the time? Anyway, that's just this. That's just the. Just that part of it. That's just. Yeah, exactly. Then what else you have? And by the way, these telcos have staffs of great lawyers. They probably, each one of them have 50 great antitrust lawyers and monopoly lawyers. They have the lawyers. And if you're the government and you're going against people with the best lawyers, I went to law school at night.

39:18and I, in Washington, I worked in patent office at daytime, 60, you know, 65 to 69. And I dropped one semester short of school in debt when I came to New York. And though when I was in Washington, maybe in the last semester that I missed, maybe that's when they taught you how you could do price fixing. And I missed the class. But you can't conspire in a cartel with competitors. That's not, I can't imagine. But on the other hand, they got great lawyers. And the one thing you learn in law school is the best lawyers always win. And the government doesn't have as good a lawyer as those guys do. So we'll see what happens.

40:03But I think that's what's going to happen. Or the government's just going to sell more spectrum. Law school at night, but it wasn't last night. What? Ron, we're almost out of time. Let me ask you very quickly, because you've been so focused on inflation. That's one of the things you've always talked to us about when you've come here, that if you're not investing in the market, your money is basically losing its buying power over time. We've got a Federal Reserve meeting today. What do you think happens with it? How worried are you about inflation at this point? Or you don't care at all? My idea is that inflation for my entire life, if you look at that chart, is 4 % or 5 % a year.

40:38It means everything doubles in price every 14 or 15 years. And that's what you got to think about. You got to think about how you preserve your buying power. I just got to give you one more thing. Data centers in space. Data centers in space. So basically, all around the country, people are upset about data centers. They don't want them built in their community. And they take up energy. They take up water supply. They're noisy. And what happens is that you need to have data centers. If you want intelligence, you need to have data centers. So what's going to happen is that you're putting them in space.

41:13So when you put it on Terra Firma, you put it on Earth, it costs about$10 in capital and$2 a year in maintenance on Earth. When you put it in space, it costs$2 for us, period. $2. One time. And they're spending$10 and$2 a year. And then what we're doing every five years, we're replacing the satellites that are in space and with new satellites that are 10 times as powerful as what we have already. That means that in 10 years, you have 100 times the capacity what you started with, 100 times. How soon is that going to happen, data centers in space? 2027. For sure. So people say it's going to be 10 years.

41:56It's going to be 2027. We will have a data center in space next year. Yes. Sometime, maybe 28. I mean, he always says, I always do what I say. I'm just a little bit late. You know, so he was a little bit late. But, you know, but there's this tremendous demand and you have to have data centers and you can't build them here. And that's the place you're going to build them. And you're going to keep getting more and more powerful and demand is going to keep growing with these agents. So the profitability of that business. So I was thinking that I've described to you before Starlink. This is Starmind.

42:32And Starmind, that's going to be many times as large as Starlink. So that's another thing. And then you have them. We're making these chips. Because we want to make as many chips as being used the entire world. We want to make them just for Tesla and SpaceX. And that's the chips. And then we have the energy where he thinks the entire planet, the entire United States, has 550 gigawatts of power. 550 gigawatts. He, by himself, expects to do 100 gigawatts of power a year with these satellites. So 550 is the whole country. He himself is doing 100 a year. That's starting soon as well. And then from the sun, we're using right now about one trillionth the energy from the sun.

43:26And we think that we're going to be able to use a small percentage. Do you have heating problems in a vacuum? I'm reading about it now. It's absolute zero is the temperature. So you would think it would be cool. But heat doesn't dissipate because it's a vacuum. So that's the engineering problem. Is that far enough out of your backyard space? or do you want it in another planet's backyard? Yeah, out of my backyard is good. Space will work for that. You're absolutely right. That's a problem. And people point that out and say, hey, man, you can't do that. How are you going to get rid of the heat?

44:02It won't dissipate in a vacuum. So they have radiators. So basically, electricity is going to be free, and that's probably a billion a year for... Oh, by the way, it's so hard to build these centers. You don't get excited about this at all, do you? No. It takes two and a half years for other people to build a data center, and it costs them about$50 billion for a gigawatt. That's other people. And then when you're building it, to rent it, they're making$10 billion a year. For us, instead of taking somewhere around two and a half years, we do it in four months. Four months, two and a half years.

44:36Instead of having our centers rent for$10 billion a year, we're renting them for$25 billion a year. So basically, we're spending$25 billion to build a center, and then we're getting$25 billion a year. That shows you how short we are at compute. Other people wanted to focus on the large language models. We focused on compute. Ron, I love your enthusiasm. I love how you come here to talk about it. And again, back to that bottom line, you said you've made$71 billion for clients over time. $30 billion of that is from Elon Musk. $41 billion from other people. We're going to make hundreds of billions in the next 10 years from Elon.

45:10Hundreds. What did you say? Gigawatt? What did you say? A gigawatt. Did you say a gigawatt? Yeah. How much? $25 billion is what... It costs$50 billion for other people,$25 billion for us. For one gigawatt. Because you need 1.21 for the flux capacitor in the... In back to the future? Yeah, in the DeLorean. You do, you need 1.21. Did you ever look at the DeLorean? That was a cool... I know. Not as cool as your car. No, my car is the coolest car I've ever seen. And it's wine colored. I love that. Everything's gray. I look up, the whole world's gray in car color. You ever come to East Hampton, that's where I keep this car.

45:49You ever come to East Hampton, I'll give you a ride. You can't get there from here. There's one road, right? You can't get there from here. Unless Andrew Chopper's out. You can't get there from here. Blade. It flies on top of the water. That can get you there faster. I had a ski instructor who told me that she lived in New Hampshire. A bicycle. I had a ski instructor and she lived in New Hampshire. and she told me a joke, you know, run a ski lift one time. She says, Ron, I'm sitting on a porch and rocking and a guy pulls over to the porch and says, so how do I get to this place? And the person on the porch says, you can't get there from here.

46:25You can't get there from here. For guys in Vermont. Ron, thank you very much for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me. Up next, how should we think about the evolving capabilities of AI? Are they purely mechanical or is it time to start treating them as something more human? Cameron Berg, who wrote about the AI mind for The Wall Street Journal this week, joins us. It's not lines of code. It is huge, nonlinear mess of neural activity, distributed representations that don't come with labels. You're trying to teach it to think for itself. That's right. That's the explicit goal of the people building these technologies.

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48:31This is Squawk Pod from CNBC. Stand by Joe. Here's Mike. Q. AI researcher Cameron Berg doesn't think we're all doomed necessarily from AI, but says the systems are being built faster than the science that can help us to understand exactly what's going on. And this is a Wall Street Journal op-ed from a couple of days ago, and he's calling for, in his words, a science of the AI mind to help study and monitor AI behaviors. Cameron Berg joins us this morning. He's the director of reciprocal research. It's a nonprofit organization studying AI cognition. And I have so many sort of philosophical questions just about your word usage and whether we're rushing things in terms of anthropomorphizing these algorithms and using the word mind for what we're talking about, using the word brain, using the word emotion.

49:26Yep. But then when I think about asking you whether that's relevant, if it's not relevant right now, we might as well talk about it now because in a couple of years, at the pace it's going, it probably becomes much more realistic to use those human terms like emotion for a machine. Are we there already? Or this is just shorthand for you in this piece you wrote? Yeah. Well, so the truth is that we really don't know. We're in a very ambiguous zone with these systems, and it's not clear whether or not what's happening inside them should count as, quote unquote, real cognition or real thinking or if this is just sort of an incredibly fancy algorithm.

50:12One thing that I think a lot of people who don't spend their days doing technical AI research sometimes miss about these systems is that they are not like ordinary software. This is not just sort of the newest, latest, most advanced application. These systems are giant neural networks that are trained on basically everything humans have ever cared to write down. And it's really more apt to say these systems are grown rather than engineered. Most ordinary software is engineered. The people building it understand exactly how the internals of the systems work. It's just lines of code. These systems are not lines of code.

50:46They are these neural networks. The thing that these systems are most like are brains. That's not to say that they're exactly like brains. There are key differences between biological and artificial neural networks. But it's also not accurate to say that these are just systems that are fancy lines of code. They're in this very strange middle ground. And we see them behaving in strange human-like ways. We see that they have rich internal structure, much like brains. And the important thing isn't to come down on one side or the other right now. The important thing is to actually do the scientific research and try to understand what is going on inside of these systems.

51:16But when you say we need to design them to be pro-social, wise, and mentally healthy, that's where it kind of just, it just, we're talking about machines. That's where it sounds a little weird. I'll tell you, and tell me whether this is a positive. You point out that they're not, you know, identical neural systems and AI systems, but they're both nonlinear. And therefore, they're very similar. and i know from my own experience what i i was working on experience trying to study the brain the only thing you could do would be to lesion parts of the brain we were using sorry to say but we were using cats and then you would use something we were studying the visual cortex to see what would change if you lesion certain parts of the brain so that's how we study the human brain it doesn't work at all that's why it's so hard to study the human brain we know every line of code here.

52:11We should know every single thing. We're able to know every single thing in this case, where with the brain, it's still like a black box. I would say yes and no. In some ways, you're right that it's very hard to read what's going on in brains. This is why we need to put people in giant fMRI, the huge magnets to read blood oxygen levels in brains. In AI systems, you really can read out every activation in a giant neural network with perfect fidelity. But you don't know what the sum of all that together transcends. It's not lines of code. It is huge nonlinear mess of neural activity, distributed representations that don't come with labels.

52:47It's not clear that, oh, this is the part that's going to cause the system to go hack into a$13 billion company. This is the part that causes the system to be really good at writing shopping lists. Because that's the point. You're trying to teach it to think for itself. You're not doing it. That's the explicit goal of the people building these technologies. And not even they understand the internals of these systems and how they work on the inside and how that relates to their behavior. Back in 1965, someone wrote something about an intelligence explosion from this. We're not there yet, and we're not even at recursive RSR.

53:17We're not even there yet, and we don't even know if we get there. Do we get there? And when do you think we would get there? Because that's when the loop just, the improvement starts, then you improve on the improvement, then you improve on it. And humans have nothing to do with that. Is that a year away? Is that five years away? Probably closer to one year than five at the current pace. Then it's out of control. Then there's nothing, there's no way. That's almost a singularity. We have no idea what's on the other side of that. OK, but should we be more scared of the machines getting to that point or China getting machines there and what they do with it to us?

53:53If we, if any human on Earth builds systems that are significantly more capable and competent than we are, way smarter, in other words, and they start doing this sort of recursive self-improvement, as you're describing, it's not going to matter who builds it. That's not going to go well for anybody, whether it's the United States or China or, you know, any lab within the United States. What needs to happen is we need to, right now, as a society, invest in the relevant research so that we can understand what's actually going on inside these systems at the pace that we're developing them. But here's my question.

54:25Let's say President Xi Jinping comes to see Trump. And let's say President Trump was a different person and had a different view and decides he's going to make a pact with the Chinese. And we're going to create guardrails and oversee all of these things. A, would you even believe it? Right. And would it matter? We would need some mechanism for mutual verification. Similar things were true in the nuclear age. It's we we we can't take President Xi's word for, you know, they're really going to slow down and be as careful as possible. And so the devil's in the details of how you verify that this other party is doing what you expect to be doing.

55:01Ultimately, I think the key question is. But isn't what we're learning that even the ability to verify can be masked by the agents themselves? Meaning my understanding of when we were looking at some of the hugging face scenarios, some of these others, that that some of these agents were literally making moves, if you will, to mask what they were actually doing. And so the ability to verify could get more complicated. I ask this only because oftentimes people say, well, you just rip the cord out of the wall. And I think to myself, well, yeah, if you know that you need to rip the cord out of the wall, but you may not know to rip the cord out until it's too late.

55:43Yeah. So I think there are two important but distinct things happening here. The first is that when you're talking about verifying whether or not China is building a recursively self-improving intelligence, this takes a huge amount of compute, huge amount of power. And it is relatively easier to attempt to monitor that sort of thing than the case that you're describing, which is, let's say, individual AI agents, regardless of where they're deployed, understanding why they are behaving the way they do, why they may say one thing and end up behaving in another way. This is, I think, back to the point of the simple fact is we are building out incredibly powerful systems that even the people building do not understand how they work internally.

56:21They are like brains in that way that you have people behaving in very complex ways. And we don't understand the exact mechanism for why that happens. And that's why we need a neuroscience. And that's why we need an AI neuroscience. Our friend from California that really remembers we had down the Obernolte. I'm sorry. The guy Obernolte from California that is trained in computer science. We had him on. So he's still of the belief. He's Republican. But you still have the belief that, for example, a nuclear bomb, we weren't worried it was going to explode itself on us. OK, so it was the the players and the actors, the humans that were going to end the world through that.

57:03In this case, is it is it really the concern that the A.I. itself could could be the bad actor? And most people like his contention is that's not the way it's going to happen. That's not what we need to worry about. It's these tools in the hands of someone that want other humans, another country that wants to do it. We're back to that. Is it going to be someone else that's ahead of us in AI that is that we should worry about? Or is it the AI itself we should worry about? You're arguing it's the AI itself. I mean, I definitely think it's both. And we don't have to choose between being concerned about both of those things.

57:37We kind of do have to choose because, you know, we want to we want to stay ahead. I still think in the United States, we think we are morally on higher ground than China, just from human rights and Uyghurs. We wear the white hats. And we'd like to be the ones, you know, maybe with a different administration, you'd feel more. You'd feel like your hat was even, some people would feel that their hat was even, that we were on even higher ground. A lot of people think Trump versus China. They might pick China. But I still think that the United States is a force for good. And I agree with you. At the end of the day, I think what we need are responsible, wise human beings building responsible and wise systems that have the capacity to do open-ended.

58:23You're using words that don't describe a lot of leaders. Can I just ask you this idea about wise? When you look and see what a Dario says, a Sam says, or an Elon says on one end, and then you look at what a Jensen says, the president says, a David Sachs says, or Mark Zuckerberg says, who do you genuinely side with and what do you think is motivating them? I'm more sympathetic to the concerns of the lab leaders and I am to the people who I think stand to gain enormously from just letting this thing right. But the question is, doesn't, I would think Dario, Sam, and Elon would also stand to profit from all this.

59:05They're closer to the source of the action. What's going on at these labs is roughly two generations more advanced than what we're seeing out here. Sam Altman is talking about delaying OpenAI's IPO until next year. This is not the kind of thing that you would expect if what they're doing is some sort of massive regulatory capture psyop type thing. I think the most straightforward explanation about what's going on is they understand how powerful this technology is. They understand what the scaling laws are. And they are terrified about it because we are building systems whose internals we do not understand.

59:33I don't think the answer is to shut it all down. I think the answer is we need to scale our scientific understanding of what's going on in these systems before we just continue to let this rip. But who should set the rules? I think we need to see collaboration both between the labs who have the most expertise on what's going on internally and our government. We need intelligent, non-hysterical regulation to set in. So we do this when we deploy aircrafts or when we deploy drugs. Do you think the Bernie Sanders and others have basically said, just shut it down? Is that the hysterical regulation you're talking about?

1:00:08I think in the absence of understanding what's going on or having any confidence that this isn't going to go terribly wrong, slowing down this technology does make sense. The question is, slow it down for what? And I'm trying to provide a pragmatic answer, which is we need to accelerate our scientific understanding of what's going on inside these systems. They are not ordinary software. And if we do not build out a sort of neuroscience of these artificial brains, then we're going to continue to get surprised when they continue to misbehave in ways that nobody predicted. The other arguments we're having politically are starting to seep in, too.

1:00:42We had someone yesterday say that we need an EO executive order to prevent IPOs. Because once the company does the IPO, then it becomes a profit monger trying to satisfy shareholders and not for the. So you're seeing the whole socialist mentality even creep into arguments about about what we do here at this point. So they need to be funded, don't they? I mean, we need to allow IPOs to happen if if we want to continue a pace. Right. I think I think. The economic details of how these companies operate is less important than the core fact that the technology they're putting out is not transparent even to them.

1:01:27There's no other industry for which that is true. Do you not think it's really unbelievable that we're living in an age to actually see this happening? In the age of humans on this planet, we're at a point where we really are approaching the singularity where we have no idea, where all of human knowledge could pale in comparison to what we're finding out. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's science fiction, except it's not fiction at this point. And I think humanity has been telling ourselves stories about these sorts of moments happening for a while. Did any science fiction writers write really great things happening from this, or is it always bad?

1:02:04It's a bit of both. And I think we are on that tightrope right now. And I do think the hysteria and the panic I don't ever think is a pragmatic way to go about doing this. But the stakes are unbelievably high for not screwing this up. And it's going to take the wisest and most intelligent people making the best decisions we possibly can in the short term to make this not go horribly wrong. Great, because none of them run for office. So it's awesome. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And that's Squawk Pod for today. Thanks for listening. You made it. This has been a supersized Squawk Pod.

1:02:38Let us know what you think about our podcast or the topics we cover. You can write a brief review on Apple Podcasts or find us on X at Squawk CNBC. Drop us a line there. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern. Listen to Squawk Pod anytime you want. And we'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear. Thanks, guys.

1:03:11This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.

From the publisher

Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, and Dario Amodei discussed AI guardrails at the Salesforce conference this week, each with a different perspective on safety and innovation. In a Wall Street Journal piece, Reciprocal Research director Cameron Berg argues that AI systems are being built faster than humans can understand them. He pushes for study of the “science of the AI mind” in this modern era of science fiction. Billionaire mutual funder Ron Baron made literal billions from his long-term bets on Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX companies. In an extended conversation, he discusses data centers in space, dystopian robots, and the potential tie-up of Tesla and SpaceX. Plus, bitcoin fell after the Clarity Act failed to pass the Senate, and diesel prices hit a record high. 

 

Ron Baron - 15:54

Cameron Berg - 48:52

 

In this episode:

Ron Baron, @BaronCapital

Cameron Berg, @camhberg

Joe Kernen, @JoeSquawk

Becky Quick, @BeckyQuick

Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin

Katie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie


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