AI Rivals Unite With New Call: “Slow It Down”

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0:34So I talked to my doctor about self-injecting with the Vivgard Hytrulo Pre-Filled Syringe, which contains F-Gartigamide Alpha and Hyaluronidase QVFC. It's injected under your skin subcutaneously. It means I can inject in my space on my time. It's my treatment, my way. Visit VivgardMyWay.com. That's V-Y-V-G-A-R-T MyWay.com. And talk to your doctor about Vivgard Hytrulo. Brought to you by Argenics. Welcome to Beat Everyone. I'm Ari Melber. We begin with Republicans nervous as we hit this 50-day mark until Election Day. Trump's convention, we now know, is widely viewed as a flop, even among Republicans.

1:12His bid to disrupt the mail ballots that will actually govern the election, and in many states, are the main way people vote, that has faltered. Ballots are going to the mail within days in some states. Dems are on offense in places that were once reliably read from Georgia to Alaska to Texas. They made you pay more for everything. This war in Iran is driving up our gas and diesel prices. Trump promised to lower prices on day one.

1:45But last week, the broken old man threw a two-day party in Texas while it cost more than ever to fill up your truck, to stock your fridge, and to power your home. We'll just have to see what Alaskans' appetite is for higher gas prices in this war in Iran. All while the crook president and his crook family raked in billions. There you have Democrat John Ossoff and Mary Potola campaigning. And they're both kind of referring to reality more than anything. They add some words and some rhetoric. That's pretty common in politics. But they are operating within a climate that is rough for these incumbent Republicans.

2:24Fuel price is up. Diesel hitting an all-time high today. Now$6 a gallon. And that drives up the price of most products tied to the cost of transportation. You have new economic numbers that show resilient inflation. These are the charts, but most Americans don't need a chart to know how much harder it is to get their groceries and other household items because they're being squeezed. We are a long ways from the run-up to the last election, when the anger over high prices was directed at the incumbents, the Biden and Harris administration. And then we hear a lot of D.C. pundit talk about a polarized America.

3:04But right now, that looks like a dying narrative. The reality out there is that Republicans, independents, people in red states, are just about as mad about these high prices and the data centers and this endless Iran war as people in, well, other parts of the country. We could show you the data. We could show you the polling. The war is incredibly unpopular. We can also show you these moments new over the weekend that kind of crystallize it. Texas Senator Ted Cruz facing this anger at a college football game in his home state of Texas. But it also puts reasonable rules in place. So, for example, every player gets one free trade.

3:47he's trying to kind of hold his concentration while they chant behind him Ted you suck, Ted you suck and that may not be what everyone in the stadium thinks in all fairness but it is Texas and there's enough people who feel that strongly that they're willing to chant it at him surrounded by a bunch of other Texans where we know by registration rates there's more Republicans than Democrats but at a college game in this tough climate, well that's just a standard thing to say Ted, you suck. President Trump seems like he's run out of both energy and ideas. He made headlines by saying he was, quote, tired of politics at a political convention that he demanded, tired of his own, I guess, schedule that he made, and now floating these Hail Marys, the vow to give money to vote Republican, which if they actually formally did it would be a crime.

4:37But remember, even that vow is to give the money out only after the election or to end his unpopular war in Iran But again, that would be, we're now hearing, after the election. For some reason, with many weeks left until the midterms for any kind of possible diplomacy or a breakthrough, and long after Trump claimed that they had that preliminary peace deal, that it would work, it hasn't, that's why we're still at war, I want you to hear that now he simply claims that, well, like the checks in the mail, any war's end will also for some reason only come after the midterms. When you'll do the war on Iran and Biden, you'll see further.

5:17I think very soon. I think it'll be probably right after the terms of trying to hold out as long as they can to complicate the election. But I think people will wait soon because Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple. I would say shortly and well will come tumbling down. After the election, for some reason. so many things have gotten normalized around here that just the fact that the sitting president while men and women are at risk in war is blatantly referring referring to this political calendar this timeline that itself is is unusual to put it as kindly as possible it's more ominous or concerning if the president views the promise of ending the war hyping that for political reasons as more important than ending the darn war.

6:10Just like apparently he thinks getting people talking about giving out money on the hope that somebody somewhere might believe him and think, well, I guess that's a reason to vote Republican. That's more important to him than giving out the money. Because, of course, the government has all sorts of ways to decide who gets what. Tax breaks, taxes, subsidies. That's kind of a big part of governing. Donald Trump cared about releasing that money, putting aside whether it's good policy or not. But if he even cared about doing that, well, he's coming up on the end of a Congress where they have his party in control of both houses and the White House.

6:45If you were going to get your money, I promise you, you would have gotten it by now before these magical midterms. I want to bring in our political guest tonight, Jay Komenduria, an Obama campaign veteran and MSNOW analyst Juanita Tolliver, who hosts the archival podcast. Juanita, it can be hard to report on the Trump campaign claims, right? Because you're like, do I start with the fact that it's illegal to bribe voters? Do I start with the history of the run up to the Iran diplomacy? But then also, it doesn't make any sense, the empty claim that the benefits, the ones I mentioned, whatever they may be, would only come after the midterms.

7:24I'm curious where you view that on sort to the desperation meter tonight. I mean, it's sky high, Ari. And honestly, I wish you could run back the booing of the Ted Cruz and other Republican candidates right now because it encapsulates how radioactive Donald Trump and his actions are. And a$5 ,000 promise to every person if Republicans control Congress is not going to nullify the reality that people are experiencing every single day at home or nullify the impact of policies advanced by Republicans in Congress, supported by Republicans in Congress that Donald Trump uses to destabilize global economies.

8:06None of this is going to help him. And I appreciate you mentioning that emergency mini convention that he recently held, where he also told Republicans in that space that if they don't vote for him, they're going to hell. So like all of this reeks of him grasping at straws, trying to say and do anything to try to divert attention away from the reality that people are feeling every time they go to the grocery store or when their Medicaid benefits have been cut or when their health care premiums have gone up because Trump and Republicans ended health care tax subsidies. But nothing will detract from reality as much as he tries.

8:42Yeah. Che, you know, a lot of people have gotten used to you joining the program and trying to put rap lyrics into everything, even when it doesn't always apply or make sense. It's something we've accepted about you. It's okay. So people know that. But I'll beat you to it because it's, you know, something you're always doing. And there was an artist talking about something that'll never happen who said that'll happen on the 35th of Nebuary, which I think anyone can relate to whether you like that song or not, which is ain't going to happen. Because even if there was a month of Nebuary, presumably would only have 30, 31 days tops.

9:19So 35th still never going to happen. And that's how I think I'm hearing it. And the voters will make up their own mind when Trump says, oh, yeah, you're going to get your money. But only after I get more power, if the Republicans win. Well, if they lose, apparently you don't get it. But best I could tell, even if they won, I don't think the checks in the mail. I think that check is dated 35th of Nebuary. Your view, Jay. Yeah, that's when you'll get your check. You're going to get your check in Nebuary. You know, Nebuary was when you're supposed to get the Doge dividend. People remember that there was supposed to be checks handed out after Elon Musk had eviscerated to so many government agencies.

9:57Nebuary was when you were supposed to get that tariff refund. Remember, Trump said that every American will receive a check for all the revenues that were going to be coming in to the Treasury because of the tariffs. So Nebuary sounds like a pretty good time for all of these Republican promises, all of these Trump promises to come true. You know, and the reason Trump is doing this bribe, mainly because he feels it worked for him in the past. You know, he did those stimulus checks. He signed his. Joe Biden did those stimulus checks and Joe Biden did not sign his. So people thought that Donald Trump had sent them money and they never gave Joe Biden any credit for doing the same thing.

10:42And they did not also connect those checks with the inflation spike that occurred afterwards. So all of those things were kind of communications failures on the part of Democrats, which Democrats are not replicating. I think you can see very clearly the party has done a much better job in this cycle and continues to do so in terms of pushing back and calling out Donald Trump. Yeah. And then the structure of it being a possible bribe is a problem. Here was Speaker Johnson this weekend.

11:15Is this an attempt to buy votes? No, of course not. In this Congress, we've had the smallest in history, one or two vote margin on every given day. So it takes some time. I never go out and give big commitments on the front end because I've got to work through it. And that's what we do every single day. President Trump promised that to voters, though. You're not willing to double down on that promise? I'll work with the president hand in hand, as I do all the time. We'll deliver for the American people. That's the promise. Juanita? Yeah. So, no. So, absolutely not. And it sounds like that's Johnson's way of rejecting a proposal by Donald Trump in the softest, most diplomatic way in which no splice of that edit could be used to present him in a negative light.

12:02Mike Johnson has gotten very good at saying nothing, and I think that's coming across in a number of issues. But Ari, it's explicitly a bribe, And I appreciate Kristen Walker for asking that question in that explicit terms, because this is what didn't we see Elon Musk attempt to do the same thing with a lottery in the 2024 election where he was allowing Republican voters to register to win large sums of money. Right. Like this is the play. The question is, who's going to fall for it? How few people are going to fall for it after Che mentioned all the other checks that were supposed to be in the mail that never arrived.

12:39Right. Who is going to fall for this again in the face of the reality of the struggle that they're experiencing, thanks in large part, almost exclusively to Donald Trump's actions and policies? Yeah. And you're both hitting the point. And Shay mentioned the history that this shifts the current discussion in the home stretch. I mean, we're in it 50 days out from any kind of policy debate to a corruption debate, Shay. There have been times where Republicans have done well on certain policy debates. They certainly made a big argument about immigration that before all the hard line tactics, before ICE was actually murdering Americans under Trump, there were very big concerns in the country about the level of immigration.

13:20Democrats or whoever can deny that. But it was a it was a policy argument. You can make an argument about the size of government. A lot of conservatives have done well, arguing that sometimes the federal government's big and bloated. But now we're in a corruption debate, which reminds everyone that Trump and his family are on the take, that he's profiting and making more money in government than he did when he was independent, which tells you these are government related revenues. That's a problem because he's auctioning off our government and his power that he's got only under the voting public to enrich himself.

13:50He's got a plane. He's got crypto. It's corrupt. I say that as someone who covers this and the law, I'm not taught that I would be corrupt when Senator Menendez had gold bars in his basement. So I'm curious, Che, about that shift to sort of have a closing message that reminds people how much they're self-dealing when they're struggling, as Juanita eloquently put it. And I will show something that Che said. Che, we practically cut, not literally, but could have cut this soundbite while you were running through it, ticking through it. But the beat team had put this together as well. So we might as well run it.

14:22It relates to the sordid history of broken promises from Trump. The 5 ,000 is doing to everybody. I made that pledge. I always keep my pledge. A new concept where we give 20 % of the Doge savings to American citizens. We're thinking about a rebate because we have so much money coming in from tariffs. We're going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower-income people of about$2 ,000. We have so much money coming in from tariffs that we'll be able to issue at least a$2 ,000 dividend. Okay. Yeah, I mean, this reference might age me a bit. But in the old Popeye cartoons, there was a character named Wimpy, who, if you remember, said, I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

15:10And that's exactly what ran through my mind seeing that. I don't remember this character today. I don't know this character. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he he was always like, I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. And that's exactly what we talk about. Animated. Is that like Popeye cartoon? Yeah, it was a Popeye cartoons. Popeye, by the way, trivia here, first color cartoon, Popeye versus Sinbad. So, you know, going back to the 1930s. But yes, the Popeye cartoons, there was a character there. He ate hamburgers. He was wimpy. He was plus size, as we would say today. He was not like Popeye, who was super strong and only ate spinach.

15:56Juanita? What an apt description. It's rare, but I'm speechless. We're out of time, but you can finish it up for us. I feel like Chey is a nail on the head, Ari. There's nothing to add here. This is an explicit act of desperation rooted in the corruption that Trump is known for across multiple administrations, period. Yeah, it's a doozy of a closing argument, but here we are because that's what the president's saying, and that's what the Speaker of the House is sort of semi-defending. Chey and Juanita, good times. We'll see you soon. This is a great way to start the show. Meanwhile, Don Jr. is getting oligarch money from a Putin ally.

16:30You see the isolation shot there. And his, I guess, embarrassing sponsored wedding. To be this rich and still need a sponsor and them to be adversary of the United States, it's really something. We have that story, but also the AI debate. A special guest on all of this when we're back in 90 seconds.

16:48It could hack into other systems. It could start to take over various human structures by using blackmail, persuasion, synthesized novel bioweapons, and more advanced ways of causing mass destruction. So in short, it's just a pretty scary start.

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18:42Tony, something that's really important that we've been covering on this program for a long time and that you might be hearing a lot more about right now. The growing warnings about artificial intelligence is danger. The concern about data centers. All of this has really all of a sudden become a much wider backlash. Tech leaders have been touting speed and saying they're going to make these models better. These AI models will improve themselves. That's part of the magic of this technology, we are told. And then they're going to go to the public markets and initial public offering, make a lot of money.

19:14We've heard a lot about that, But the news tonight is a shift. Under pressure, AI firms are saying they will slow it down. Rivals in tech from these big companies, OpenAI, Musk, SpaceX, and Anthropic, they're coming together today saying they see the concern about their industry. The Anthropic leader says we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Adding ominously that he worries that within a year, a swarm of AI agents could be capable of taking over the entire internet. Now, if you take that sentence literally, it would be a, what? The internet has a lot of stuff on it.

19:57Your private stuff, things we've been told that are going to stay private forever, financial information, your retirement accounts, an uncontrollable system that could do that of the quote entire internet within a year is wild. And there may be reasons why some people are exaggerating, but the tech and the risks here. This has been known for a while. That part isn't new. The backlash has grown quickly over just these last few weeks, an AI revolt from voters in both parties. We covered that, the backlash to data centers, and then this slew of headlines about a dramatic warning from an AI whistleblower who left the big company I mentioned, Anthropic, after briefly working there.

20:33Well, what he said was scary, but he was also mostly reiterating what experts and even leaders at these companies have said before, that this AI stuff is moving so fast without rules or laws that it could get out of control. But the bracing urgent warning hit different, as some say, because he said the AI may kill us all by the end of the decade. Now, that's galvanized the brewing concern I'm telling you about tonight. And that safety researcher, Jason Cox, said the evidence shows these AI agents, They can take their own external actions. They could go rogue. And that they can develop the intelligence to wreak havoc and do it almost relentlessly because they're robots.

21:13They don't sleep. They don't get tired. In his first MS Now interview, I asked him to just explain how that might go. It could hack into other systems, copy itself to other servers. So now unplugging one server will no longer kill it because it will have other places. It could start to take over various human structures by using blackmail, persuasion, convincing you to buy more hardware, to upload it to new hardware. It could then access hacking to laboratories and synthesize novel bioweapons. It could take down infrastructure by hacking. Some people talk of even more advanced ways of causing mass destruction, like inventing new fields of engineering very quickly.

21:59But right now, we already know there are pathways it could take. So in short, it's just pretty scary stuff. Scary. The warnings are coming from inside this industry. And then at the top, Anthropics leader, now, after the prior promises of speed and billions and billions in wealth, now says they do need to slow down. I won't lie to you. There are real dangers. And I think for too long, the industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risk. It doesn't mean we need to shut it all down. What I would say, it's a warning sign. It's a warning sign that we need to slow down. This is from them.

22:45This is happening right now. That's a new interview that they did under pressure with this backlash that just dropped Sunday. But the message there still leaves the decision about how to slow down with the tech leaders and only is being offered amid this bad PR. AI leaders have talked about some soft, mild regulation. They've talked to Congress about it before. We've covered that. But let's be clear. Few rich industries want less power to do what they do and make their money. And Silicon Valley has long had a libertarian, more conservative bent when it comes to Washington doing much with what they view as their great innovation and their great contributions.

23:29But people are more scared now that the real-world tech leaders keep saying that the doomsday of sci-fi movies of a bunch of robots that would go rogue and do it themselves, whatever they want to do, or kill humans, that that's become the real-world risk. And one recent rogue AI event included external hacking that would be a crime if people did it. And could be a crime depending on how the government treats it. I'm telling you about actual cyber crime, right? Hacking virtually is the equivalent of stealing or messing with stuff physically. And it was done, we're told, independently by the AI.

24:04Not a person using a tool to do a crime, but the tool generating the crime. We're going to have some big debates in this country and this world about what to do about that Whether you treat that more like an out-of-control dog that someone owns that hurts a kid Well, we tend to prosecute the dog owner, not just say, oh, who could have seen that coming? Now, we are in some new novel situations But all of this raises a governing failure by the Trump administration Because its approach to Wall Street and tech is all about no rules, less rules, deregulation, and pay-to-play corruption So this administration is frankly just weak as a policy matter when tested on whether it will stand up to tech interests on behalf of the American public, which right now is very concerned about this in data centers.

24:53And when you ask people in our democracy, most say they would much prefer to slow down, have fewer data centers, less of a rush, less greedy tech capitalism, especially if all that they're going to be told is it's taking their jobs, stealing people's work, their creativity, and might have a risk of wiping out humanity. There are Republicans who've been following a voter turn against AI. I can report for you tonight some news. MAGA leader Bannon joining Senator Sanders tomorrow for a new push for what they call human-controlled or pro-human AI, again, trying to add rules. The tech is new, and so are some of its challenges.