Mark Beale, what do you got?

You know what? I know there's this temptation that some of this sounds scary and sci-fi-like, and unfortunately, this is the world we now find ourselves in.

And the critical issue is that we don't understand what happens once they let off this process, the companies let off this process called recursive self-improvement.

This RSI, as it's known, is when an AI model builds the next version of itself.

And there could be some constraints and some ways that this doesn't go in, in, basically an explosion.

But some people are, are thinking that this could be like a nuclear chain reaction, the endpoint of which we simply do not know.

And that is creating a lot of anxiety among the companies and the labs themselves.

Mark Biel, your thoughts?

Your thoughts, sir?

The science fiction movie is no longer a science fiction movie.

It's here, time now.

We have AI agents of untold numbers, we have no idea how many of them, roaming around the internet committing felonies, breaking into other people's companies, social engineering, uh, attacks on other human beings, and the response from DC has been a little muted.

Um, it's, it's a little shocking to me, um, that these things are now happening and, and, and the, and the government hasn't sort of been a more, uh, assertive actor in, in some of this stuff.

But clearly we are at a new paradigm now.

Um, I'm sure you probably saw that 1,300 or so of these company employees signed a letter urging the government to work with them on an international way to, like, basically pace AI development, so these companies can be relieved of some of the competitive pressure and take the time that they need to do the safety and security pieces.

This is accelerating at an accelerating rate, and very quickly, you're not gonna have the option, you're not gonna have the option to control it, sir.

Your thoughts, sir?

The science fiction movie is no longer a science fiction movie.

It's here time now.

We have AI agents of untold numbers.

We have no idea how many of them roaming around the internet committing felonies, breaking into other people's companies, social engineering attacks on other human beings.

And the response from DC has been a little muted.

It's a little shocking to me that these things are now happening and the government hasn't sort of been a more assertive actor in some of this stuff.

And very quickly, you're not going to have the option You're not going to have the option to control it, sir.

Mark Beal, what do you got?

You know, I know there's this temptation that some of this sounds scary and sci-fi-like, and unfortunately, this is the world we now find ourselves in.

And the critical issue is that we don't understand what happens once they let off this process, the companies let off this process called recursive self-improvement.

This RSI, as it's known, is when an AI model builds the next version of itself.

And there could be some constraints and some ways that this doesn't go and basically an explosion.

But some people are thinking that this could be like a nuclear chain reaction, the endpoint of which we simply do not know.

And that is creating a lot of anxiety among the companies and the labs themselves.

Mark Beal, your thoughts.

So where did we go wrong or where did this shift happen or what changed that now this generation we raised is now acting totally differently than what we thought we raised?

Great question, and I'll hit it, but I do want to just, because April, the proud member of the millennial generation here, I want to hit on this.

Every time I do present, I actually call millennials the MVPs right now in the workplace.

And the reason why is they're managing up because, you know, their boss, C-suite, whatever you want to call it, is probably a Gen Xer.

It might be a millennial, but it's probably a Gen Xer.

It could even be a boomer.

But millennials are also the ones who are like, oh, by the way, these new kids just showed up called Gen Z.

What would you tell these people who are feeling those tensions in the workplace and like really knee jerking into these behaviors?

How do you see this playing out?

You're right.

This is a massive bet.

But unlike what happened in the dot-com boom, these companies are making money.

They're just not profitable yet.

And so every billion dollars they're investing, they're expecting a return o- of ten billion dollars.

And some of those numbers are starting to come in.

If there's, if the federal re- regulation is a year or two away, you know, according to Altman, we may be at AGI by that time.

Mark Beal, your thoughts, sir?

Hey, Steve.

Yeah.

It's a bit of a s- tale of two AI policies right now in Washington, D.C. and the Republican Party.

You had this framework that was released by the White House, and then you have the counterproposal by Senator Blackburn.

And I think if you look at the, the, the White House proposal, it is a little bit of a head-scratcher.

These guys had a, you know, three months or something, then they, they came out with a couple of bullet points that with, with three, you know, 31 space, uh, uh, spacing in the middle of these, of, of that document.

You know, Mark Levin's yelling, "Oh, they could come and..." Hey, these guys are here right now setting off basically dirty bombs to go into every p- uh, every individual's bedroom of their children, sir.

And they're talking about i- is deeper and broader than just some contractor dispute, uh, between the Pentagon and a, uh, and a, and a provider of, uh, of products and services, sir.

Hey, Steve.

This is incredibly serious.

I've, you know, I've spent the last almost eight years working really hard to bring Silicon Valley and the Pentagon closer together, just because we knew that those are the two groups that are gonna help solve important national security challenges.

And right now, with this contract dispute, as you said, it is way bigger and more profound than that.

And complicating matters further is that both sides have an element of truth and, and, and are, are, are, are right and wrong in some important respects, and I'm just gonna break some of that down.

The first thing is from the...

They see s- different states saying, "Hey, if you're not gonna have any regulation, then I gotta protect my citizens." What we have here is the frontier labs that are, are, are doubling and tripling down, right? And anytime there's any question at all, s- should there be any safeguards, y- actually, people in authority are saying, "Well, we kind of like it with no safeguards." Isn't that the kind of field of intellectual battle we are right now?

You're not gonna pay for the data center's electricity or the water." Uh, there was no ringing, uh, you know, of the tech bros' position on unregulated artificial intelligence, sir?

Yeah.

Hey, Steve.

It was, uh, remarkable in that sense.

I mean, given the messaging really since day one of this administration on the importance of accelerating AI, I was expecting the president to kind of really lean in and make the case to the American people as to why, you know, the policy agenda that he's pursuing is, is the right one.

And then, you know, about a week ago, I even heard the vice president on Fox News talking, in my view, the first- in my sense, the first time, sort of more about the, the downsides and the tail risks of AI.

So I don't know if this is, like, a bit of a sea change for this administration, where they've realized that on the campaign trail, in the midterms this year, i- it's not great politics to be kind of talking about AI and all these various things that, that are kind of uncontrolled and unregulated.

Given the knife fight [chuckles] behind the scenes of what, what you and Brendan and all these other people, these heroes, Max Telmark, everybody's working on every day, it was pretty stunning, was it not?

There was no ringing of the tech bro's position on unregulated artificial intelligence, sir.

Yeah.

Hey, Steve, it was remarkable in that sense.

I mean, given the messaging really since day one of this administration on the importance of accelerating AI, I was expecting the president to kind of really lean in and make the case to the American people as to why the policy agenda that he's pursuing is the right one.

And then about a week ago, I even heard the vice president on Fox News talking, in my view, in my sense, the first time sort of more about the the downsides and the tail risks of AI.

So I don't know if this is like a bit of a sea change for this administration where they've realized that on the campaign trail in the midterms this year, it's not great politics to be kind of talking about AI and all these various things that are kind of uncontrolled and unregulated.

And so I thought it was very notable that the president didn't really lean into AI and instead just basically told the American people that, look, we understand that we're going to be building these data centers and we're going to make sure that you, the working class, are not going to be the ones that are footing the bill for the tech industry.

It was pretty stunning, was it not?

Mark Beal.

Hey, Steve.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Four things I think the War Room Posse needs to be aware of on this.

And I guess I'll just start by saying the people in the industry itself, this is not surprising to them.

They've been saying these things for a number of years now.

It's just it's finally starting to break through to the public consciousness.

What a software company is going to do? Mark Beal.

It has a benefit to put us ahead of our, our rivals and our enemies, like the Chinese Communist Party, but it also has dangers to it, right? So, so where do we stand right now in, in your perspective? You've, you've dedicated your life now to this, this single issue, sir.

Hey, Steve.

And we're at kind of a crossroads.

Um, twenty twenty-five saw a lot of attempts by the tech industry to drive home a policy of basically amnesty and no guardrails across any of these issues, and they were unsuccessful.

And now the president has directed his team to put together a legislative proposal and to try to work with Congress to figure out what the right policy for the United States should be.

And to be clear, these, this, the stakes for this policy could not be higher.

There's a lot going on in the world today.

Hit it again.

And it's also just a lot to ask to get a booming new tech sector to restrain itself maybe with government intervention.

In DC right now, the conversation on AI is still very, very early.

Mark Beal is president of Government Affairs for the AI Policy Network, a lobbying organization.

There does seem to be, uh, at least an appetite, uh, to start measuring these, the risks and, and start to examine more carefully, you know, what threshold, what alarm bell might need to go off that would change that assumption about whether or not we ought to consider something as drastic as a pause.

How does this bill from Senator Hawley who's been at the forefront of this fight with Blackburn, ho- how does this fit into it?

Hey, Steve.

Yeah, this is really important.

I don't know if most Americans recognize just the, the qu- the decisions being made in Washington today over AI will shape the future of the United States for 100 years or more.

And so while we're all kind of being...

We're, we're all focused on all these different headlines, uh, behind the scenes, as you mentioned, there's this war that's being waged on the future of AI and the, the...

It's table stakes for the country and for the future of freedom and for the future of our Constitutional republic.Um, so Senator Hawley, you know, he's long been a champion of, uh, uh, of kind of everyday folks.

W- w- what say you?

But this shows you that people like Ted Cruz and those that are doing the bi- bidding of the oligarchs are gonna slip a one page in with a, you know, one paragraph, two paragraphs that could change American life, sir.

You know, I- it, it would be one thing if the President of the United States came out and, and said personally, "This is a big important priority for me." But we didn't even see that f- AI policy appear once in his statement of administration policy.

And so I, I, it's not clear to me that the white- that the president himself is, is really, you know, focused on this.

I think he's got a big agenda in the Big Beautiful Bill, and at this point, you know, we're, we're slowing down the, the, the implementation of, of what the American people elected the president to do over this kind of very bespoke issue.

And I think, you know, Joe or someone else mentioned some of the polling, and the American people don't, don't want to see a, a freebie to the, to the industry, just let it do whatever it wants.

And, and it's not, you know...

I saw, uh, Secretary Lutnick today tweeted that, you know, it's concerns about just California and, and, and the liberal agenda, but as you pointed out, it's Texas, it's Utah, Georgia.

It's a, uh, it's a matter of life and death to do this." Do, do you agree with that or do you think that's oversell?

Um, are you on that sort of wavelength of, of we should stop this, we should pause AI until we have a real plan? Or what is your position on that?

Yeah, y- I think when people say we should pause AI, I think naturally a lot of o- other folks might, might question, "Well, what about China? What is China gonna do here?" And, and actually, Joe, what, what I like to say is there, there's sort of actually two separate races between the United States and China as it pertains to AI.

The first race is the race for commercialization and diffusion, and this is a race that America probably needs to accelerate.

Um, this is a race, uh, that American infrastructure gets deployed first, and it's more s- it's- it's most capable, and that all these countries and partners around the world are using our technology and building on top of that, and, and that's gonna give us a really important means by which we can imbue our values, uh, and American founding principles in the deployment of, of this technology.

But then there's this other race, and, and this is the race to the, as you mentioned earlier in your introduction, the race to artificial superintelligence.

And that is a potentially very dangerous circumstance, and that race, uh, uh, if we get to a point in which we are starting to see, and we already are at very, uh, preliminary levels, these models behaving in, in, in, in sort of deceptive ways or, or, or sort of unexplained ways, and they start to have very robust capabilities across a whole bunch of different domains, and it's looking like human beings can't steer them effectively and reliably, then I think the, the United States government was gonna have really no choice but to hit the brakes a little bit.

And that's why we might be actually quite lucky to have President Trump in office, because it's gonna take a master negotiator to be able to, to, to, to, to, to deal with the Chinese on this issue and make the Chinese understand as well that this might be in nobody's interest to continue to push forward and race ahead and, and potentially drive the entire human race off a giant cliff.

Uh, is that gonna change? Is that 'cause the industry's just flooded the zone with money, uh, and what they want is kind of laissez-faire and, and d- devil catch the hindmost in this?