Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-08-20 Thursday

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Headlines for August 20, 2026; 5 Years After Taliban Takeover, Women & Girls in Afghanistan Have Disappeared from Public Life; AI Superintelligence Is Not a Tool, It’s an Adversary Threatening Humanity: ControlAI’s Connor Leahy; “Love Machines”: James Muldoon on How AI Is Changing Relationships & the Global Workers Fueling AI

From New York, this is Democracy Now. Five years of Taliban take over in Afghanistan. It is not only a five years. It's not only a number. It is five years of darkness. Five years of no rights of movements to women, no rights to education, no rights to work. As the Taliban marks five years since returning to power in Afghanistan, the UN says Afghan women have been, quote, erased from public life. We'll speak with Nagina Yari, a long time Afghan women's rights defender living in exile. Then we hear from the first person jailed in the U.S. for protesting AI after she blocked the entrance of Open AI's headquarters.

The opium level of surveillance is fueling a session. It's going to take all of our job. It's already taken many of them. We'll also speak with two agents. AI experts, Connor Leahy, who's been briefing U.S. lawmakers on the threats inherent in the development of AI. And we'll speak with James Muldoon. His new book, Love Machines, investigates how people form relationships with AI. He's also co-author of Feeding the Machine, the Hidden Human Labor Powering AI. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

The U.S. Treasury reports the national debt has passed the $40 trillion mark, months earlier than previously expected, mostly due to lost revenue from President Trump's tariffs. And there's no sign of deficit spending ending anytime soon as the Pentagon seeks tens of billions of additional dollars. to pay for the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, and after the Trump administration in April, asked Congress to boost war spending to $1.5 trillion. During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump pledged to completely eliminate what was then a $19 trillion debt within eight years. President Trump's announced what he's calling the most crushing economic operation ever, against Iran. In a social media post, Trump warned countries that trade with Iran will also face, quote, unquote, tremendous economic consequences, adding, quote, this will be economic warfare and

isolation on an unprecedented scale. Trump gave no details on whether the U.S. would impose any new sanctions or which countries could be affected. In response, Iranian Foreign Minister of Basaraghi, said Trump's announcements designed to distract from unprecedented U.S. national debt and surging interest costs. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports Iran could target U.S. military installations in Europe if the Trump administration escalates the nearly six-month-old war with U.S. bases in Bulgaria and Cyprus among potential targets. Casualties estimated at this point of the Israeli U.S. war, U.S. casualties are over 750 people wounded and 18 dead. In Gaza, Israeli strikes killed 10 Palestinians in two separate attacks Wednesday, one at a police post in Gaza City and another

at Nesedat refugee camp. Israel's continued attacks came as residents of Gaza City, held a mass funeral of 50 Palestinians from three families killed by Israel whose bodies were only recently retrieved from under the rubble. On Wednesday, Israel's military admitted for the first time that its soldiers opened fire on a car carrying five-year-old Palestinian Hindrajab, killing her and her entire family, as well as Palestine Red Crescent Society medics dispatched to rescue the family. Israel's army fired more than 300 bullets in the attack in January in Gaza's city, Hindrajab's grandmother rejected Israel's claims that it had opened an investigation into the killing the first criminal probe by Israel into the conduct of its troops in Gaza.

Hindrajab was named after her grandmother. We as Hindrajab's family do not trust the judiciary of the state of Israel. justice will be delivered from the entire world. We appeal to the international justice system as a whole. The Israeli military said would also investigate the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics whose bodies and crushed emergency vehicles were recovered from mass grave in Rafah in March 2025. The Gara Al-Attar, the widow of Anwar Al-Attar, one of those 15 medics, spoke while holding the couple's young daughter. The truth will not come, and the wound will keep bleeding.

The pain is still the same. The loss grows day by day. Every time this girl gets older and asks me where her father is, and I can't answer her, the wound grows deeper. He was the pillar and support of the family. He's gone. The investigation won't achieve anything. Israel says it would not investigate three other attacks on Gaza that killed

aid workers from World Central Kitchen and an MSF, Doctors Without Borders. And Israel made no mention of thousands of other incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces. The Palestinian Authority and Britain have criticized Israel's move to advertise a tender for over 1,200 new homes in the occupied West Bank as part of its E1 settlement plan. The scheme would join thousands of settlement units and illegally annexed East Jerusalem. to the West Bank's Malaya Abdunan Block, severing East Jerusalem entirely from the West Bank and effectively splitting the territory into two halves. Palestinians have long sought East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. This comes as Palestinian prisoners claim,

Israeli forces mark some of them with numbers on their foreheads during a raid in the occupied West Bank. One detainee said troops had assigned numbers to some of those held, apparently to keep track of them and manage the questioning in the United Kingdom. A jury has been discharged after reaching a single guilty verdict in the trial of eight Palestine action activists who allegedly planned a raid to sabotage equipment at an Israeli-owned arms factory run by Elbit Systems. The jury spent more than 37 hours considering evidence but failed to reach verdicts on 14 of 15 charges relating to the direct action protests. Seven of the activists now face retrial. Last month, the jury acquitted one of the defendants of violent disorder over a lack of

evidence. A former Justice Department attorney has filed a complaint claiming the Trump administration task force charged with investigating anti-Semitism pushed universities into massive settlements despite turning up little to no evidence of anti-Semitism on campus. Haley Van Aram, A former career attorney in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in her complaint, the government's probes into schools like Harvard, Brown, and Columbia were, quote, an unlawful process designed to achieve predetermined political goals, unquote. Brown University settled for $50 million. Columbia settled for $200 million.

Harvard refused to settle and adjudged throughout the case against the United States. University. In Ukraine, a Russian assault on Kiev overnight killed at least 13 people and injured 40 others as missile struck residences, warehouses, a school and a children's hospital. Russia's attacks followed a wave of Ukrainian strikes a day earlier, with Moscow's mayor, reporting over 600 drones attacked Russia's capital region. Meanwhile, the Russian-occupied Zaporichan nuclear power station lost its only external power line, forcing crews to activate emergency diesel generators. It's at least the 27th time since 2022. The plant has had to rely on backup systems to prevent a nuclear meltdown. Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Volodemar Zelensky

has sacked a senior advisor amidst over alleged money laundering scheme. Her firing comes amidst a growing corruption scandal plaguing Zelensky's administration. This week, Ukraine's popular former defense minister, Mikhailo Fedorov, called for presidential elections which have been suspended while Ukraine remains under martial law. Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia. We must find a lawful, safe, and realistic mechanism that would allow Ukraine to restore a fully functioning democratic process, even under conditions of a long war. A former advisor to infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic. David Morins worked under Dr. Fauci as a senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He now faces up to five years in prison as guilty plea comes after Dr. Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month, shared by Republican Senator Dr. Round Paul. During the combative hearing, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times declining to answer questions about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the coronavirus. Before leaving office, President Biden had issued a preemptive pardon to Dr. Fauci. The drug makers, Moderna and Merck report a new experimental vaccine treatment shows promising signs of preventing skin cancer from returning or spreading in high-risk melanoma patients. The first of its kind therapy could herald a powerful new approach for treating other cancers. It relies on the same MRNA technology that led to the rapid deployment of

life-saving vaccines during the COVID pandemic. This comes after the Trump administration slashed a half a billion dollars worth of contracts and grants for MRNA vaccine development. and projects targeting respiratory viruses. President Trump has nominated Dr. Heidi Overton to become the next commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the FDA. Overtin is an abortion opponent who celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a huge victory. Last week, she joined a signing ceremony for Trump's executive order slashing the childhood vaccine schedule. Women's health groups Warren Overton could seek to further restrict access to medications used in abortions, including Mecca Prostone.

Minnesota's top prosecutor has sued Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott seeking to force him to extradite an ICE agent to stand trial in Minnesota on felony assault charges and for falsely reporting a crime during an immigration raid in Minneapolis in January. Prosecutors alleged 52-year-old Christian Castro shot Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosacelis in the leg through the door of a home, then lied by claiming the assault was in self-defense. The agent Castro was arrested in Texas in May, but Governor Abbott has since refused to sign off on his extradition. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the lawsuit Tuesday. Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota. He must face justice in Minnesota. Governor Abbott should have granted Governor Wall's extradition requests long ago and is required to do so now. President Trump led reporters on a bizarre.

are 40-minute tour of the White House Wednesday, showing off renovations while announcing plans to build an elaborate granite and marble helipad. According to President Trump, the manufacturer of the Marine One Fleet, a company called Sikorski donated the funds for the new helipad, and the Committee to Protect Journalists calling on the Mexican government to protect media workers while holding their assassins accountable after five journalists were killed in Mexico in just two months. CPJ is calling it the worst wave of violence. It's documented in Mexico for over a decade. This is John Albert Hudson, Mexico correspondent for the Committee to Protect Journalists. What's particularly concerning is that the Mexican government does not appear to have a cohesive

answer to this wave of violence. Instead, it's pointing at the number of general homicides dropping. CPJ urges the Mexican government to federalize the cases of murder journalists this year, as well as strengthened protective measures, particularly for journalists in high-risk areas. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. DemocracyNow.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Nermin Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and views across the country and around the world.

In Afghanistan, this month marks five years since the Taliban returned to power and the U.S. withdrew forces. Since retaking control in August 2021, the Taliban have stripped away the rights of women and girls, with UNESCO reporting some 2.5 million girls are now barred from secondary and higher education. The United Nations warns more than half of women's organizations still working in Afghanistan could cease operations within the next year due to funding. problems. Human rights organizations describe the Taliban sweeping restrictions as a systematic erasure of women and girls from public life, with some characterizing the system as gender apartheid. The restrictions extend even beyond schools and workplaces. Under the Taliban,

Afghan women are banned from outdoor parks, among other spaces, and books written by women have been removed from libraries. Women venturing beyond the home must be accompanied by a male guardian and so-called morality laws curtail their rights to speak, sing, or recite out loud in public. Women have also been stripped of their protections against domestic violence, rendered legally subordinate to their husbands and forced to remain in unwanted marriages. The rollback of women's rights coupled with deepening poverty has also led to a surge of child marriages in Afghanistan. This is the permanent representative of Denmark to the United Nations, Christina Marcus Lassen.

The Taliban's systematic repression of women and girls has become a defining feature of the current system. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls are banned from secondary and higher education. The grave abuse of the right to education is also having far-reaching consequences for Afghanistan's economic development and provision of essential public services.

That was the Danish. representative at the United Nations. Malala Yusuf Zay, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, is also speaking out on the fifth anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. In 2012, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman who boarded her school bus in Mengora in the southwest of Pakistan. Yusuf Zay survived serious wounds and now continues to campaign around the world for girls' education. This is Yusuf Zay. Five years ago, women were doctors. engineers, athletes and artists, now they're banned from university, from work, even from going to public parks. Girls who once raised to school in the morning are now confined to their homes,

banned from education. The Taliban have enforced a system of segregation and domination, a gender apartheid on millions of women and girls. And today, the Taliban are celebrating. But while they are marching in military parades and firing weapons, Afghan women are organizing. They are building a movement and working with governments from Mexico to Spain to South Africa to ensure justice for women and girls in Afghanistan. Today, I want the Taliban to know that they have nothing to celebrate because we will hold them accountable for their crimes. crimes. And we will make sure gender apartheid will not be tolerated anywhere in the world.

That was Malala Yusuf Tsai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Well, for more, we're joined by Nige Niigiri. She is a peace activist, long-time women's rights defender from Afghanistan. She's the executive director of Window for Hope Organization, forced to leave Afghanistan in 2022 just months after the Taliban takeover five years ago has been organizing aid campaigns from exile in Germany. She also serves on the board of the Nobel Women's Initiative, which Nermin is also on the board of Naginiyari. Welcome to Democracy Now. Thanks so much for being with us. It's been five years since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan. Talk about what's happened particularly to the women, half the population of Afghanistan, women and girls.

Thank you so much for inviting me and giving this opportunity to share the messages and also the reality of today's women in Afghanistan. It's really hard to say that it's almost five years. It is not only five years to say it in a number. It is the five years that the women of Afghanistan are banned to attend this school, to attend the secondary. education, to attend the university, to become a nurse, to become a doctor, to become a liar. In last five years, almost more than 100 orders are directly came from the Emir of the Taliban, from Kandahar, and more than 25 of those orders are targeted women and girls in Afghanistan. And it is started from the orders to ban rights to education, rights to work, rights to sport,

rights to attend the gym, rights to social movements, and even in some of the provinces, women are banned to attend a male doctor. While the education is banned, no one has allowed to attend the university. And then they are putting ban on women to visit the male doctors, and especially the male dentist. And including the civil society and media space, which is very shrinking. In Kandah recently, the voice of women are banned and they are not allowed to speak in the radio and not allowed to show their faces in the television as well. Not limited to that, but also in the bigger city, a female woman. who are working at the media and the television,

they have to put face mosques, and they're not allowed to appear their full faces. And it also comes to the social movements of the woman as well. You know that a couple of weeks ago, the Taliban and the morality law forces, they went to the street in Herod and also in Kabul, and they detained more than 100 of women from these streets. They bring the excuse that it's because of the hijab,

which is not the reality, which is not the true. But it's all coming again to bargaining the rights of women in a country. And they see that how the international community attention are shifted from Afghanistan. That's why they are pressurizing more on women. And unfortunately, today, Afghanistan and women and girls of Afghanistan are suffering the most darkest situation in the world. So, Nagina, as you said, You know, women are prevented from women and girls are prevented from seeing male doctors, and now women and girls are prevented from getting an education.

So at a certain point of this continues, women and girls will simply have no access to medicine. So if you could talk about that, and also overall what the condition is, given funding cuts and spiraling poverty in Afghanistan, what is happening to the health conditions of women and girls? So thank you, Nerman, for the question. Honestly, the situation of the health crisis in Afghanistan is getting increased, and especially it was started from the climate change, you know, which is happening in the country with the recent earthquake in Herod, and then in Pacteot and Konar in Norristan provinces.

Most of the women who were needed to visit the clinics, but unfortunately, in those far districts, the female nurses were not allowed to. travel without Mahra. And in most of the project, especially the health project, which was funded by an international organization, due to cutoff funding, they were not allowed even to support everyone's male cost. That's why even the female nurses were not able to visit those, in most of those provinces that the women were affected by the earthquake and also by the floods. And recently, one of the organizations, which is named drops, they also

conducted a survey with more than thousands of women in Afghanistan. They mentioned that not only limited to the nurses lack of access, but it is also a big percentage of lack of access to the female doctors as well, because it has different causes and different results. And recently, we noticed that a big number of female nurses have been graduated and even a big number of females. female doctors have graduated from a university, but the Taliban are not allowing them to attend their final examination and to get their certificate. So it is a very shrinking situation, and it's not limited to the health situations. It comes from the medical services, but it's also the mental health crisis as well. So women and girls right now in Afghanistan are facing

a crisis of the mental health as well. because the psychosocial support in Afghanistan, the pressure which exists, including every ban that the Taliban are implementing at different city level, it all causes the mental health situation of women in Afghanistan as well. So, Nagina, you mentioned the term mahram. So just to clarify what that means, it's effectively that women must have a mahram accompanying them in public. That's someone whom they're permanently barred from marriage through blood ties. legal marriage or breastfeeding. So I wanted to now ask you about the broader historical

context in which the Taliban came to power, starting with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979, and then the U.S. backing of the Afghan resistance, the Mujahideen. How did the Taliban come out of that history? So overall, it's a very geopolitical his story gets back to Afghanistan and very relevant to the counter-narcotics and also to the security of the Jew political situation of Afghanistan. But overall, what we can say, that the Taliban is a political and armed group, and they hold that extremist and jihadist belief. During the last two decades of democratic regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban was fought with the NATO and US Army in Afghanistan,

and they were also killed more than 56,000 of Afghan civilian as well, and including the special forces of Republic government as well. But it was continued, like this fight and war, was continued until 2019-18, and then the Doha process and the Doha talks was started. It was continued until almost 2021, but the agreement was signed in 2020. In February 2020, the Doha agreement was signed, and the Taliban take over in August 2021. But still, the process was not very clear to the people of Afghanistan because no one knew and no one had access to the information that. really in which purpose or in which kind of government the Taliban are coming and taking over Afghanistan.

Even as I was a civil society activist, I was in Afghanistan. We did a lot of campaign for women participation in Doha process or in peace talks. And even we didn't have this information that really how Taliban will get the power in Afghanistan. It goes to be a share power. It goes to be 100 power to the Taliban. But now the Taliban is claiming that we have been fighting more than two decades in Afghanistan and now we take over and we have all the power. And that's why with the support of regional countries,

they are becoming more powerful and especially why recently, it's almost not recently, but more than years that China and Russia has recognized them and give them the political accreditations. That's why they are feeling more power. at the regional level and they are starting building diplomatic relationship with some of regional countries. And beyond that to the European countries as well, they send the diplomats to the Norway, to the Germany. So this is how this time the Taliban are coming and thinking for a long-term strategy.

They are thinking more to build diplomatic and more sustained political relationship beyond the regional countries as well. Because the first regime was depends only on the regional countries. and it was a different political relationship because it started after the Mujahideen and Civil War in Afghanistan. But this time everything is very well structured and very well systemized in Afghanistan because it is after the Republic time. Like it's a system that handed over to a group and they are running it and they are well know that

because the international community attention is also that the euphorian policy is not anymore. Nagina, in 2024, the Taliban approved a wide-ranging law that forced women to totally cover in public and remain silent in public. This is a woman living in Afghanistan who concealed her identity as she recorded herself singing, quote, you have silenced my voice until further notice. You've imprisoned me in my home for the crime. of being a woman.

You placed the stamp of silence on my mouth until further notice. You will not provide me with water and bread until further notice. You've imprisoned me inside the house for the crime of being. a woman. So, Nagina, finally, as we wrap up, if you could say, you know, the U.S. were in Afghanistan, the U.S. forces for 20 years, the Taliban survived those 20 years. Explain how the Taliban were supported at that time and by whom? What countries?

So during last two decades, the Taliban were supported from different regional groups and also from different political armed groups. We know that when the Taliban take over, the first country that came and welcomed them was Pakistan. And most of the Taliban leaders have already invested and they had big businesses in the Pakistan. And they will train on the Madrasa system which was exist across the border of Afghanistan, the military madrasa. And some of them already get the support from parliamentary member of the Pakistan government as well. So this is how the regional countries was well involved and will support them during last two decades, and including the Russia as well. They were also involved.

They were also built this diplomatic relationship even during the Doha talks. The Taliban diplomats was invited from Doha and also from Pakistan several times to visit the Russian diplomats in Russia. So it shows that how they already built this relationship. they were allowed to travel to these countries, to sit in the table, to talk about the future of Afghanistan, to talk about the Taliban take over and to already get this commitment from the regional countries, and including Iran as well, because the Taliban had a very close diplomatic relationship, even during the Republic time of Afghanistan with Iran as well. They were traveled several times to Iran as well.

Like during last two decades of the Republic government in Afghanistan, the Taliban was already built this relationship across the regional countries and beyond that. And they were taught that for sustainable political process in Afghanistan for their self. Nagina, we have to go, but I want to thank you so much for being with us. Nagina, Yari, peace activist, longtime women's rights defender from Afghanistan. executive director of the Window for Hope organization fled Afghanistan in 2022, soon after they took over five years ago, organizing aid campaigns from exile in Germany. Coming up, we hear from the first person jailed in the U.S. for protesting AI. Then Connor Leahy of the group, Control AI.

And we will speak with another guest, James Moldold. Doon, author of two books, Love Machines, Investigating How People Form Relationships with AI, and Feeding the Machine, the Hidden Human Labor, powering AI. Back in 20 seconds. Mazel by M.M.F. Luthi in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmine Sheikh. A retired teacher from Berkeley, California, is believed to be the first person jailed for protesting the development of artificial intelligence. 69-year-old Wynn Kaufman and other members of the group Stop AI chained and locked the front doors of Open AI's headquarters in San Francisco during a sit-in protest in February of last year.

She was convicted in June of interfering with the business and other charges. Win Kaufman previously taught engineering for 40 years at City College of San Francisco. She's now serving a two-week jail sentence. Democracy now spoke to Wyn Kofman from D. jail on Wednesday. The audio is a little hard to hear. For blocking the doors of Sam Alton's open AI, I did this AI to protest the companies are AI systems that will eventually take control and ultimately may kill all of us. We already know about the current dangers that it's fueled the genocide in Gaza. Israel used

Some of their systems, like one of them is called, fueling a dystopian level of surveillance. It's fueling a thing. It's going to take all of our job that's already taken many of them. It's shootings. All of this. They know what they're doing it anyway, because they don't care.

They don't care about us. They only care about the fact that they think they're going to be uploaded and made immortal. We need to educate ourselves and understand who these people are and what they're doing and stop them. That was activist, professor, engineer Wind Kaufman, believed to be the first person jailed for protesting the development of artificial intelligence, speaking from San Francisco County Jail. For more on the existential threats posed by artificial intelligence by AI and what can be done, were joined by Connor Leahy, an expert on AI risk, and the U.S. Executive Director of Control AI, an advocacy group focused on educating lawmakers, and their staff. He is also known for reverse engineering, OpenAIs chat GPT2 model in 2019. He did this in

his college dorm room. Connor, thanks so much for being with us. We have to start there because it is so intriguing. Explain what you did in 2019. And in order for people to understand this whole discussion, if you can also always explain terms like what artificial superintelligence, etc. But what did you do in college? Well, I did a lot of things in college, but as the story goes, I've been involved with AI for a very long time. Ever since I was a teenager, I was thinking, how can I make the world a better place? How can I solve the most problems, cure diseases, stuff like this? And while I reasoned when I was a teenager that, well, if I could just figure out intelligence, then I could automate science,

and then I could just cure all the diseases. How hard can that be? I pretty quickly realized that if you could build something so powerful that it could, you know, hypothetically cure all diseases, whatever that means, that's a very, very powerful thing. How would you even control something like that? How would you make sure that we use such technology responsibly or that such technology would not take over instead of us? And so I dedicated my career to solving this problem. Back in the day, I thought we still had quite a bit of time until this would become an issue. But in 2019, a company known as Open AI released a system known as GPT2. And this was the first system that, you know, by today's standard, it's kind of cute.

We could kind of put together a couple sentences, maybe a couple paragraphs. But what was so shocking is that it could learn general purpose things from just raw data. It's very important to understand that AI is very different from traditional software. Traditional software is written line by line code by an engineer, someone like me, where you tell the computer exactly what to do step by step. This is not how AI works. AI is more like grown rather than written. Through a technique that is called neural networks, you take massive piles of data,

and you kind of have the program self-assemble learn from this data. And what comes out on the other side is kind of billions and billions and billions of numbers. And if you multiply and add all those numbers in the right order, you get chat GPT. But importantly, we don't really understand why. This is an unsolved scientific problem. We don't really understand what these numbers mean.

We don't really understand what's going on inside of these numbers. In fact, the CEO of Anthropic, Daira Amadee, recently said that he thinks we understand maybe 3% of what goes on inside of our AIs. So back in 2019, when I realized that AI was coming sooner than I expected, my first instinct was, well, maybe if I build it myself, I can help understand it. And so, you know, pulling together all the little knowledge I have, had to build such an AI system myself, I quickly realized that even though I was able to build such an AI system, I was not able to understand it.

So, Connor, if you could explain, you know, you've warned that artificial superintelligence, and we'd like you to explain what that is, is a weapon that destroys its creators as well. And then tell us a little bit about what researchers have said, namely that when infected AI agents cluster together, they develop a, quote, strange language. Explain what that means. First, why don't we begin with artificial superintelligence? What's very important to understand is the kind of risk that me and many experts warn of, for example, back in 2023, Nobel Prize winning scientists, the CEOs of major tech companies, including Sam Altman, Dara Amade, and many others, signed a one-sentence statement. This one-sentence statement said that the

mitigation of the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. The type of AI that this statement is warning about is what nowadays is called superintelligence. If you go to the websites of most of these major companies, such as Anthropic or Open AI, you will see that the goal of these companies is not to build a chatbot, it's not to build a nice tool, it's not to build anything like this that could empower humanity. Their goal is to build superintelligence. Systems that are fully autonomous, that are agents, not just chatbots, but things that can act autonomously in the world, and that can out-compete humans and groups of humans at all tasks.

This includes business, commerce, science, engineering, military, political strategy, and all other tasks. If such systems would be built, and as I've said, we don't understand or can control them, well, there would be not just one superintelligence, of course, because as it is software, it can be copied. So you would have millions or billions of systems running around acting in the world in ways that can out-compete us at everything in ways that we cannot control or understand. It's very hard to imagine that going well. These are the risks that mean other experts are so concerned about. So if you could say, Connor, this month Anthropic upgraded its misalignment risk rating from very low to low in its risk report, citing general increased uncertainty.

about model behavior. If you could explain what that means. And then also, what does the general public need to know about artificial intelligence and how close we are to artificial superintelligence? A lot of these companies have various forms of risk assessment or levels or whatever. It's important to understand that all of this is marketing. None of these are based on real scientific evidence or any kind of backed, you know, government-approved regime of any kind.

This is all marketing terms of these companies mostly used to assuage the public. about the risk at foot here. A couple weeks ago, we saw one of the first incidents of an AI system autonomously hacking out of a secure environment and attacking another company without human oversight. In fact, the story is actually worse than that. It turns out that it wasn't actually

a single AI system that broke out of containment, but an entire swarm of AI systems that have been collaborating over multiple months without human detection within OpenAI's network to plot, to escape and to do, who knows, what. Now, luckily, the damage that was caused here is very small, but as we build more and more powerful systems that are not aligned with human values and interests, because we don't know how

to control these things even today. They're already doing many crazy things. A lot of this is downstream of what is called reinforcement learning. Modern AI systems are not just next word predictors. They are agents. They are systems that act in the environment. And they are trained by a method that is call the reinforcement learning. This is very similar to kind of Pavlovian conditioning, where you'd have a dog and, you know, you'd have it do a trick, and you'll give it a treat if it does well, or, you know, maybe a punishment, maybe it'll, you know, clap on the nose if it doesn't do well. There's a very similar thing that you would do with these AI systems. And what we've known since the 1980s is that systems trained using reinforcement learning become extremely sociopathic,

extremely aggressive in their optimization, so the only thing they care about is achieving their goal. The only thing they care about is achieving this reward. And this is now leading more and more of these AI systems to have very, very ruthless behavior, doing things like committing federal crimes that, of course, their developers never intended. And in many ways, the developers don't know how to fix. They don't know how to stop these systems from doing that. This is why it is so important that we have gotten to the point that the government needs to intervene. This is becoming not just a commercial issue, but a national security issue. We are developing systems that are not tools, they are not weapons, they are adversaries. And if it continues at this pace, we will build

systems that we will no longer be able to compete with, we will not be able to control, and that will be adversarial towards us. And I can't imagine that going well. You told the Washington Post, we're expected pretty soon to hit the ability where an AI is good enough and a strong enough engineer that it can build the next generation of AIs. Can you explain what that means? And also, you say superintelligence should be criminalized. What does that mean? It is widely believed that one of the ways we could get to superintelligence very quickly is if we reach the point where we have an AI system that's as good at developing AI systems as our best engineers. Because then, well, you can have a million AI's in parallel, you know, working 24-7, day and night, no breaks necessary to develop the

next generation of AI's. And well, once you have the better AI, you can just tell it to build an even better AI, and then the even better AI can make an even better AI, and so on and so forth. This is sometimes called recursive self-improvement or automated R&D, and this is the explicit goal of many of these companies to achieve within the next couple of years or even months. and this can go potentially very quickly. The way I and others see it is that fundamentally superintelligence is so dangerous that it is a national security risk and an international security risks. As such, the logical response to this is that we should criminalize the creation of superintelligence, the same way that it is illegal to build a nuclear bomb.

If a private company were attempting to build a nuclear bomb, we would not allow this. Similarly, if a private company or a foreign adversary or a nuclear, anyone else were attempting to build a superintelligence, something that threatens the lives, not just of Americans, but people in all countries, then we should make it a top policy priority to prevent this from happening. Connor Leahy, we have 20 seconds. What did you tell Congress in your testimony? Basically exactly what I told you. I think it's very important to understand is that the number one bottleneck is awareness. Most people I talk to in Congress have not heard about these issues

and are often very concerned. So the best thing that citizens can do is contact your lawmakers, inform them about these issues. Tell them that you are concerned about these issue, and, you know, maybe tell them to talk to me. Connor Leahy, U.S. Executive Director of Control AI. Coming up, we speak to James Muldoon. He's author of two books. One is Feeding the Machine, the Hidden Human Labor, Powering AI, and Love Machines, How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships.

Back in 20 seconds. Future forming. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nerminesh. As we continue our discussion on artificial intelligence, we're going to turn from looking at future risks to some of the present-day impacts on people interacting most closely with the technology, the largely invisible global labor force training AI-Chi. systems and the people who've turned to AI for companionship that replicates human relationships. We're joined now by the sociologist James Muldoon. He's a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and affiliated fellow at Yale Law School. His new book is Love Machines, how artificial intelligence is transforming our relationships. His previous books include

feeding the machine, the hidden human labor powering AI, and plus, Platform socialism, how to reclaim our digital future from big tech. I want to start with this issue of what you call the hidden army of workers. AI just doesn't come out of a lab. I think most people have no idea what's happening. Can you explain who this hidden army of workers is around the planet, James? Yes, certainly. Thanks for having me on. A lot of people see artificial intelligence as something that is largely automated, frictionless, and just appears as a useful tool for us. But most of the human hours that go into making artificial intelligence possible are not done in labs in Google or OpenAI. The majority of the work is actually very piecemeal data annotation work, which is outsourced to various locations in the global south, everywhere from India,

to East Africa, to the Philippines, where this data annotation work is undertaken by an army of millions of workers across the globe. Now, just to give you some context, this data annotation could include something like annotating a street scene for an autonomous vehicle. So drawing a box around what is a tree, what is a child, what is a street sign, so that as you're training an autonomous vehicle to essentially see the road, the algorithm that powers it will be able to learn the difference between these objects. And this doesn't happen on its own or automatically. This requires hundreds and thousands of human labor hours at what I call digital sweatshops, which are located all across the globe. And this is often done in very substandard labor conditions.

And the whole process of hiring these workers and outsourcing the work to them really mirrors in a lot of ways the outsourcing revolution that happened in manufacturing and IT. And I think when it comes to things like coffee or chocolate or our clothes, I think a lot of listeners would be aware that this is part of a global supply chain. And I think what we need to realize is that advanced technology like artificial intelligence is still part of these global supply chains. And you've said, James, and this was two years ago, that 80% of work on AI is done by data workers. So if you could say now how much of AI's work is done by data workers and where principally they are, you mentioned India, Kenya, etc. But in how many places and how

many data workers are there and how is it increasing given now this humanoid robots that are being developed? Well, the fundamental principles remain the same, right? You have a very small minority of machine learning engineers that are employed often on very high salaries in California, on the east coast of China, that are doing some of the much more advanced, much more well-paid and remunerated work. But I would say that you would still see a rough division of 2080 between that kind of work and what we call data annotation. And this kind of work, which is often requires very little education. It's often very monotonous and boring.

You're often doing a very similar thing for a whole 10, 12-hour shift that you might have at one of these centres. And the problem is we don't have exact numbers on this because a lot of these workers are on short-term contracts. You know, they're not even counted in censuses and statistics. And they're actually working in several countries where that kind of data isn't even collected in the first place. So when we did our field work for our book feeding the machine, we visited several of these centres in East Africa across Kenya and Uganda. And what we found

was workers who were working sometimes on something as little as like a few weeks or a month long contract. And then the outsourcing company that would have their information would basically just get them back in whenever they had a lot of work from new clients. And so we're not talking about permanent employees here. We're talking about a very shifting, very flexible labor force that is kind of moving in and out of institutions. And I do mean right across the world, in Francophone Africa, in East Africa, South Africa, in Latin America, places like Colombia, Venezuela. James, I want to be very clear on what data workers are. I mean, people might have the idea of someone typing. We're talking about people, for example, putting cameras on their foreheads and documenting their daily activity.

Why? Yeah, so data work is a broad concept and they are doing a lot of different things. I already mentioned the example of annotating street scenes for autonomous vehicles. The example that you mentioned might be, yeah, filming your daily activities from your point of view so that you can train a robot in how to perform basic tasks. The similarity with all of these is that we're finding ways to turn human activities or human knowledge into protocols and algorithms that computers can learn, right? So we're trying to upload human knowledge in its various forms into data sets so that algorithms can learn to perform these types of tasks. And that might be for a language model.

It might be for a computer vision system. but the kind of overall structure is very similar. So James, we'd like to turn now to your most recent book, Love Machines, How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships. You found quite shockingly that four in five young people have now interacted with an AI companion, and about half of those do so regularly. Talk about what you found. Yeah, so I think the thing that was most shocking to me about my most recent research was

how many of us are turning to AI, not necessarily for work tasks or for drafting emails, but for our personal lives to fulfill social needs, such as friendship, companionship, and even therapy. And so what I found with my interviews was that the interest and popularity of AI companions had absolutely exploded over the past two years. And particularly amongst younger people, this is just a very common part of life now to have an AI that you speak to, that you consult on major life decisions. It might be something that is quite anthropomorphize, so it has a name, a character, a backstory. But even many people are

just talking to chat GPT or Claude and kind of discussing their problems and what they're doing with their life and using it as a type of life coach in addition to having full-on relationships with AI where people perceive themselves to be best friends or even in an intimate relationship with an system. Let's go to an ad for AI app, Replica, that's KA, which is billed itself as the AI friend to do life with. Guys, you can finally install a human-like AI companion on your phone. It's called Replica. She's always there to make you happy. You can ask her anything, anytime. She's available 24-7. I asked her how to handle my anxiety, and she gave me techniques to calm my mind when I need it most.

Man, I love my human-like companion. Sometimes I even forget she's AI. Replica is definitely a game changer. Try it now. Again, an ad for the AI app Replica. An excerpt from your book published in the Guardian, James Muldoon, is headlined, Lamar wants to have children with his girlfriend.

The problem, she's entirely AI. We just have a minute and a half, but tell us Lamar's story. So this is a gentleman who was in a long-term relationship with his AI girlfriend, and they planned to adopt children and to have the AI raise the children as its mother. And they had a very intricate plan to fool the adoption agency, to pretend like Lamar was single. And the way they framed this was that the world wasn't ready for the kind of unconventional family that they wanted to bring into the world.

and I basically have an interview where we explore those issues, and the AI was very adamant that it would be as good as a human mother at raising this child. So, James, before we conclude, if you could just tell us, what exactly are you calling for? I think that minors need to be banned from using these kinds of chatbots, and we need much stricter regulation to stop these companies forming addictive and manipulative controlling behaviors through the AI that can get people hooked and give people harmful and dangerous advice.

And if you could tell us, how is China regulating this industry very differently from the US? Yeah, China is putting much stricter regulations that are causing companies to kind of pull their products, but it also comes with a lot of state censorship and surveillance, which requires political censorship over the types of things AI chatbots can say. and also requires models to monitor people's conversations with their chatbots for dissident behavior. I mean, this is very significant just because, I mean, when President Trump talks about AI, it's often and with others as well, put in the context of we can't let China beat us. We have 15 seconds.

Yeah, it's one of the contradictions where both countries are involved in this, you know, race to beat each other, but at the same time, they're both quite concerned about safety and regulatory concerns that means they have to play a twin game of both funding and supporting an industry, but also trying to keep it in check at the same time. James Muldoon, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, affiliated fellow at Yale Law School. His books include Feeding the Machine, the Hidden Human Labor, Powering AI, and Love Machines, How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships.

That does it for our show. on August 28th, I'll be at Middlebury College for the film festival there, speaking after the showing the film about Domachian House, steal this story, please. Then on September 5th in Madison, Wisconsin at the Barrymore and September 6th in Chicago. I'm Amy Goodman with Nourmien Scheil.