Kelsey Piper: A Reasonable Approach to AI
Vox's Kelsey Piper joins the show to discuss the drastic differences between the Biden and Trump administrations on AI—and what it all means for the future of humanity.
Where's artificial intelligence headed in Trump's America? Just asking questions.
In February 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a keynote speech at the AI Action Summit in Paris. He advocated for "AI opportunity" rather than "AI safety," promoting a deregulatory vision for AI that emphasized U.S. leadership and free speech while criticizing Europe's "excessive" regulations like the Digital Markets Act. In contrast, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at the AI Safety Summit in London in November 2023, advocated for pretty much the exact opposite. Where Harris sought guardrails, Vance's speech marked a sharp pivot toward deregulation and unilateral dominance, highlighting a stark shift in U.S. policy under the Trump administration. So what does this all mean politically, culturally, and for everyday humans? Will AI take our computer jobs?
Joining Just Asking Questions to discuss all of this and more is Kelsey Piper, a senior writer at Vox's effective altruism-inspired Future Perfect. We wanted to talk with her about the current politics and possible societal ramifications of AI because she has proven herself to be both knowledgeable and imminently reasonable.
Note: This interview was recorded on February 13, 2025. While most of this interview is about long-term trends and predictions, some specific claims about the then-current power of various AI models have been superseded but remain relevant in a journalistic and historical context, so we've run the original episode with no edits.
Sources Referenced:
- Just Asking Questions with Guillaume Verdon, or "Based Beff Jezos": Should we have a 'Second Amendment for AI'?
- Just Asking Questions with Ethan Mollick: How will AI change us?
- Vance's Full Speech at the AI Action Summit
- Harris's Full Speech at the AI Safety Summit
- Donald Trump's interview with Logan Paul
- Trump's executive order on AI: Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence—The White House
- Piper at Vox: It's getting harder to measure just how good AI is getting
- Piper at Vox: Four different ways of understanding AI—and its risks
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:43 Introducing Kelsey Piper and Analyzing Harris vs. Vance
03:07 AI policy shifts: from safety to opportunity
10:45 The reckless pace of AI development
17:18 Government oversight and AI whistleblower protections
26:06 Ideological bias in AI models
33:17 AI nationalism and the U.S.-China tech race
40:56 DeepSeek and the rise of Chinese AI
49:11 Transparency in AI and national security concerns
53:32 The risk of AI superintelligence
56:35 AI and the future of work: Will mass unemployment happen?
1:09:11 Silicon Valley, politics, and the AI trillionaire question
1:17:49 The question we should all be asking
- Producer: John Osterhoudt
