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.

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Kelsey Piper: A Reasonable Approach to AI

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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long-term trends and predictions, some specific claims about the then-current power of various AI models have been superseded but remain relevant in a journalistic and historical context, so we've run the original episode with no edits.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

Comments

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Vox? You rely on Vox? For advice on how governments should regulate AI?

Salon this morning, Vox this afternoon?

No thanks. How about, "Government should not regulate AI. Discuss."

Fire KMW.
Get out of DC.
Publish some libertarian content.

[Mother's Lament - (Here's your attention, Sarckles)]

Only the CIA and unelected bureaucrats can save us from Skynet. Everyone on the Georgetown cocktail circuit agrees.

[SQRLSY]

Would You PervFected pseudo-libertarians PLEASE point out WHERE Reason.com favors the over-regulators in the above just-the-facts article?

For once I CLEARLY favor Trump over Kamala and the Demon-Craps!!! Hands down! AI don't NEED not fricking regulators!!!

[sarcasmic]

You know all those articles that the Canadian and Arizonan cunts don't post any comments? Well that's because those articles don't exist.

[Mother's Lament - (Here's your attention, Sarckles)]

Fuck off, troll. Show one comment in the last six months where either you or Shillsy talked about the subject at hand rather than a rant about Trump or MAGA.
You can't because you don't. Ragetrolling is the sole reason you two shitposters are here.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Democrats are domestic terrorists)]

We need to deprive him of attention.

[sarcasmic]

"You're wrong because Vox, but I judge ideas not people."

Sure Jesse.

[Mother's Lament - (Here's your attention, Sarckles)]

"You're wrong because Trump, but I judge ideas not people."

Sure, Sarckles, you shitty hypocrite.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Democrats are domestic terrorists)]

He really is filth.

[Thought about __ all my life]

Big fail for both of you.
Ideas can never be divorced from the people that hold them for the logical reason that two people can hold the exact same view for totally opposite reasons. I might be for minimum wage laws like Gov Newsom's because I want my pizza delivery competitors to go out of business ( I have a sit-in only pizza shop) and you want them because you are sure it will help save jobs

And your reply did just what he was saying , you judged him and not his ideas.
Does anbyody read what they post 🙂

[Rick James]

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

When the technical landscape changes before you can hit 'export' on your video editor...

[Stupid Government Tricks]

That's a pretty good sign it's past time for the government to step in and slow things down and save us all.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

No. We can do better then you totalitarian view

[Thought about __ all my life]

I have notice that dumb replies often have 'we' and thoughtful have 'I' Care to tell us what 'we ' think about that ')

[Rick James]

My cynical position on AI's awesomeness is very Zen Master.

We'll see.

[Rob Misek]

I think that every invention of man needs to be scrutinized for both its potential benefits as well as its potential risks.

Just as guns can be used to protect and feed us, saving lives, they can also be used to threaten and take innocent lives.

Before we dive into the unknown of AI, let’s review our experience scrutinizing guns.

2A) A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

This text was important enough to form the constitution. But look how poorly it has been scrutinized. People with agendas omit and interpret the text to suit their biases.

Gun nuts omit the first phrase and gun phobics interpret the second as representing the military only. The result is that we’ve become paralyzed in division and conflict.

People, for some bizarre reptilian brain reason, refuse to recognize that truth, demonstrated by correctly applied logic and science, is the ONLY thing we share in peace.

What chance do we have if we refuse to accept reality? Everything becomes a source of conflict.

AI will be similarly misused and misunderstood. And as it permeates our lives the conflict might be overwhelming.

In civilization, only laws protect us from conflict. Obviously we need some more laws to protect the recognition of objective reality.

We need to criminalize lying before AI lies to us.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Democrats are domestic terrorists)]

Show the strength of your convictions. Admit to your Nazi Islamist lies, and then kill yourself as an act of contrition.

You know it’s the right thing to do.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Rldr
The jews are to blame
Did I get it right?

[Rob Misek]

You’re asking if Jews are responsible for the reptilian brain that refuses to accept that the truth is the only thing we share in peace, resulting in perpetual conflict?

No they just enshrined lying in their religion.

The holiest Jewish prayer on the holiest Jewish day yom kippur is the Kol Nidre. It is clearly a plan to lie to other people. Stupid Jews claim that it’s about lying to god because they can’t comprehend that omnipresent beings can’t be lied to.

This is the Kol Nidre text

“All vows, obligations, oaths, and anathemas [curses]which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound, from this Day of Atonement until the next we do repent. May they be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, and void, and made of no effect: they shall not bind us nor have any power over us. The vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligations; nor the oaths be oaths.”

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

So that's a yes?

[Rob Misek]

I’m pleased with the optics.

[Thought about __ all my life]

You make 4 mistakes
Kol Nidre is not in English The language is a curious mixture of Aramaic—the Jewish vernacular of the Talmudic period—and Hebrew—the language of classical Jewish prayer.
Many find ti exceptional uplifting. I remember a rock group recording it !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pVUkQbcO4o

We make many promises , from "I will" to solemn vows that we fall short on, you imply total repudiation but that is never the intent
“For transgressions between a man and his fellow man, Yom Kippur does not effect atonement until he shall have first appeased his fellow man” (Yoma 9:9).

[Thought about __ all my life]

ROb just hates religion

“For transgressions between a man and his fellow man, Yom Kippur does not effect atonement until he shall have first appeased his fellow man” (Yoma 9:9).

[Rob Misek]

I presented the text 0f the Kol Nidre and the logic that demonstrates that it’s a plan to lie.

You haven’t refuted what I said.

I’m pleased with the optics.

[Thought about __ all my life]

I have such confidence in my reply that I leave it all to readers to see that I have refuted you , soundly

[Rob Misek]

Your failure to refute the obvious and logical meaning of the Kol Nidre Jewish plan to lie has been saved and recorded.

I’ll demonstrate your failure anytime I wish.

Hahaha.

[Thought about __ all my life]

IF obvious and logical you are either saying

All Reason readers are stupid , unlike geniuis you
or
The obvious meaning isnot obvious nor the logical meaning logical

Like, you know,like just speaking English here

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I'm not worried about native born AI taking our jobs. It's the immigrant AI that scares me.

[Thought about __ all my life]

I first got involved with AI on my own, then with my BS Computer Science then with working at a major insurance company piloting it.
What I see nowadays is not AI , it is NLP (Natural Language PRocessing) and Expert Systems. What you refer to as AI is more like the long-archived work of the Yale AI Project began in 1974 when Roger Schank and Chris Riesbeck were the golden boys,whose shorthand was SCRIPTS.

And this was what Hubert Dreyfus has a lifelong attack against.

There is value in what goes by the name AI but the term is completely misleading. You address no one when you use AI.

[Thought about __ all my life]

So nobody on here actually knows what AI is. All just blabber, cocktail chatter, barrooom drink talking.

[Thought about __ all my life]

AI was very obviously a PR ploy, NLP wasn't cutting it and 'expert systems' had the word 'expert' so people wondered why the word "systems" was there if they are really experts.

AI for most on here approaces "Kamala" sophistication
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHjXf0y-VRw

Almost all she said is false.
Most glaringly, the information is processed BEFORE it goes in. We used to say GIGO Garbage in Garbage out.
Like Biden's use of computer models

[Imperial College epidemiologist Neil] Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. There were fewer than 200 deaths. . . .

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE.

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay.

So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?

Kamala would probably say the computer was correct but bad use was made of it...which begs the question: Who is responsible when LIVES are at risk and Biden/Harris are going to say "Da computer made me do it !!!"