On with Kara Swisher - OpenAI Drama to Trump to Elon Musk: What It Means for 2024

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Kara and Nayeema look forward to the characters and moments that may define 2024 by looking back at the coverage of the last year. We unpack the drama at OpenAI, to the contrast between Biden and Trump and Fox News, to Elon Musk and X with the most revealing interview moments from 2023. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new Reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher, and it's 2024. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, everyone.

I'm Naima Raza. We're taping this at the end of 2023 to be our first episode for 2024. What a year the last year has been. What's the word you would use to describe it? One word. I'm glad it's over. Okay. Well, we're getting into a new one.

And as we start it, we want to take a moment to look back at three topics that we covered heavily in 2023 that we think are going to continue to develop in 2024 in ways unimaginable. Yeah. First is artificial intelligence. The second is politics, especially the splintering of the GOP. And of course, all things Elon Musk. Which of these do you think is most likely to change course? All of them. I think they're all, all of them. Well, we'll start this with particularly revelatory moments from key guests across these subjects and starting with AI. We've really covered a lot of AI this year.

Yeah, a lot of, it's an important topic. obviously, it burst into the scene with ChatGPT, but we've interviewed, along with Sam Alton, who we'll play in a minute, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Tristan Harris, Fei-Fei Li, a whole range of people to talk about it, from negative and positive, because it's an important development. Well, Altman's ouster at the end of 2023

and his return to OpenAI, you know, just in the course of four days, was probably the biggest tech story we saw in 2023. You were back on the front lines covering it. Someone called you Ken Griffey Jr., which is a baseball person. I don't know what that means. He's famous for hitting home runs, Kara. Yeah, I'm just better than they are still. But anyway, let's move on.

Better than the baseball player. Okay, got it. No, than the tech reporters. It was relatively easy to scoop that story. Back in March, you had Sam in the hot seat live in San Francisco. He was high off the release of GPT-4 that same month and chat GPT a few months before that. And he spoke in March of 2023 about why he became CEO of OpenAI at all. Let's play a clip of that moment. I got convinced that AGI was going to happen and be the most important thing I could ever work on. I think it is going to, like, transform our society in many ways.

And, you know, I won't pretend that as soon as we started opening, I was sure it was going to work. But it became clear over the intervening years, and certainly by 2018, 2019, that we had a real chance here. What was it that made you think that? A number of things. Hard to point to just a single one. But by the time we made GPT-2, which was still weak in a lot of ways, but you could look at the scaling laws and see what was going to happen. I was like, hmm, this can go very, very far.

And I got super excited about it. Do you think that excitement got in his way? No. No, I think it was exciting to do it. No. Looking back at that interview, I mean, since then, there's been a lot of reporting about the tribes, what he called tribes in his emails of 2019, who disagreed around ChatGPT, the kind of Excel decel riff that started with an open AI, you know, over a year ago. The interview actually aged quite well, particularly this line. I am not a natural fit for a CEO. Like an investor really, I think, suits me very well.

Not a natural fit for a CEO. Yeah. Who is? You know, I think it's hard to have something so big happening and not. He's a very peripatetic person. He's restless. He wants to go to the next thing. And so, I think he probably came off as more aggressive than some liked. That's all. I'll be curious again to see what the... I don't know. So far, I couldn't find anything in my reporting, and I kept checking every complaint about him, and they were, to me, minor compared to a lot of other CEOs, but we'll see. Yeah. I'll be curious to see how that philosophical tension plays out, not just at OpenAI, but at other companies

where it's reportedly bubbling up too, Anthropic, et cetera. And so we'll certainly be seeing a lot of it in 2024. But a key moment this year was when Jeffrey Hinton stepped down from Google. Right. Cade Metz had the great piece in the New York Times about this.

And soon after, we had Fei-Fei Li on the show, a fantastic kind of part of the original generation of AI creators, someone who we might see on the board of OpenAI one day. Maybe, maybe. She worked with Geoffrey Hinton. I think she trained him, I believe. And she spoke about that relationship and also had her own warning message. and also had her own warning message. One of my current biggest concern

is the extreme imbalance asymmetry of lack of public sector investment in this technology. So I don't know if you have heard me saying not a single America university today can train a chat GPT model. I actually wonder if you combine all the compute resources of all universities in America today, can we train a chat GPT model? Because... Which where it used to be, this is where it used to be.

Exactly. When I was a graduate student, I never, you know, drooled over going to a company to do my work. So now you might ask, so what? You know, well, so we're going to have a harder time to cure cancer. We're going to have a harder time to understand climate changes. We're going to have a harder time to forecast the societal impact, whether it's economics or law or gender, race, political situations, all this is happening in think tanks like public sector, universities, and nonprofits. If the resource is really diminished, we're also going to have a harder time to assess what's going on.

I think she was making a very important point is that the public sector is not as involved in this. She's a very reasonable person about, she likes Sam Altman, by the way. She's very reasonable about the business part of it. I don't think she minds that. I think she's worried that government is not as involved as it should be in previous technology leaps. Like voice over IP or GPS or anything. Yeah, exactly. And that government can't have its arms around it, which felt the case when everything was going down in open AI.

It felt like no one had their hands around what's going on and even the regulation. But do you think there's a way to for the government to catch up now well they're trying to regulate or the public sector no i think i think i think in this case um companies or private sector is running the show this is the way it is it's the way it's going to be i think government can move in by regulating um which she talked about too um and having a part in it and being a private uhpublic partnership. You know, they've got to insert themselves a lot more because, again, Google's not going to work on climate change, except maybe if it feels like it,

or OpenAI may or may not work on societal impact. And so we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Yeah. But one person who really talked about what government could do differently was Mustafa Suleiman, the co-founder of Inflection AI. He, being in the United Kingdom, had a more specific role for government to play, including the redistribution of taxes, like redistributing income to prepare for job losses, and also very specific answers on the kinds of regulation we need to put in place. Let's have a listen to that.

So to begin with, I think that it shouldn't be okay for an AI system to imitate a human being publicly without that being explicit. have some watermark for content that allows the producer of that content to tie it back to them, right? So we don't have this imitation issue, right? And I think that can be cryptographically signed. And so that deals with some provenance. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's table stakes. The next thing that needs to be possible is that there has to be independent third-party adversarial red teamers who can attack a model and constantly try to break it, right? We do that internally, but we shouldn't be marking our own homework. and funded by independent third-party groups that aren't attached to us who can try and do their very best to induce the model to say, bias, toxic, racist, harmful content, right? So availability of third parties to do this, which social media sites have been very sketchy about.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's one of the failings of the social media age is that they haven't allowed transparency of how their platforms are being used. Do you see any of that happening in the United States? It's a very interesting comparison, the social media sites, right? As you said, none of this has happened. No, the government has been much more proactive around AI than of any other technologies I've ever seen. Whether they do something about it, we'll see. But they've certainly, they're certainly aware of the power of this. And so, you know, the problem is these companies are so powerful now and they didn't

do it when these companies weren't as powerful. And that's one of the big issues. One of the arguments that Mustafa made in his interview, which wasn't in that clip, was this idea, it hasn't aged that well, I don't think, but this idea that the leaders in AI now are different from the leaders that were in social media platforms at the early aughts. They were more aware of risks, more encouraging of regulation, a tight, seamless crew. You think that's true? I think they are. I think they're more, yes, they do. I think they're more thoughtful, all of them. Even if I don't agree with them, at least they acknowledge things that they never acknowledged before. Everything was up and to the right. I think these people are not stupid and they can't pretend that this isn't incredibly powerful technology.

score an interview with in the midst of the open AI drama. Let's hear from him about how he, as a leader at Microsoft, thinks about Excel versus Decel and this rift, this philosophical rift that underpinned the Sam Altman debacle. I mean, the way, at least the optimism I have for perhaps this generation of technology is the fact that this debate exists, right? I actually welcome this, right? Which is, hey, look, at the end of the day, you know, as Brad Smith would call it, every piece, every technology ever invented was both a tool and a weapon. And the question is, how can you really make sure that the use of the tools gets propagated and the weapons not so much? And so, therefore, us to be able to make sure that we are having that

conversation right up front versus sort of dealing with the unmitigated consequences subsequently, it's got to be welcome. So I don't think of this as a split. I mean, I think about also there's a timeline, right? There is the existential issues in the long run if you lose control of AI, and that requires real thought and real safety research, real alignment research that you have to commit to. And then the real world harms today, right? Whether it's election interference, deep fakes, bias, bioterrorism, the amount of work we did, whether it's for Bing chat or chat GPT or co-pilot to make sure that harmful content doesn't get created. So I feel that we have sort of got to work all ends of it on a daily basis. It's not just not

talking about it, learning the engineering process, having these principles guide the engineering process, and then having oversight and safety boards and with real teeth. Oversight and safety boards with real teeth. Going to happen anytime soon? I don't know. I think, I happen anytime soon? I don't know. I think, I don't know. I don't know. I'm definitely heartened by a lot of politicians and the stuff they're talking about. We'll see if they have the political.

I think everyone's going to be overwhelmed by the election. So possibly not. Maybe tech will once again get a break because of a big election year. And it is an important election year. Unless there's like a bad news story, which might come out after the election. But I mean, he talked about election interference, safety issues, deepfakes. I mean, we're going to see this in 2024 at a speed and scale we haven't seen before, right? Who would you want to bring on to talk about that?

Oh, lots of people. You know, Alex Stamos. There's a bunch of other people. If we were to bring on Sam Altman back for an interview now. Yes, we will be bringing Sam Altman back. What would be your first question for him? I think, you know, he can't talk about the investigation until it's done. But I think I would ask him what he is most scared of. I think I'll start with that. But he's going to interview me for my book.

We're going to do a little session here in San Francisco, which should be fun. I hope you can just turn that section around into being an interview of him. Oh, of course I'm going to. That's a bit of a Trojan horse interview. No. No, I'm doing it in every city. I'm going to have a different internet person interview me. I think it'll be interesting discussion. I'll be interesting to see how his reign continues at OpenAI and we'll hopefully have him on this year.

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Available feature, Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Okay, OpenAI was the big tech story of 2023, but the big story of 2024 will probably be this election, probably be Biden versus Trump. We lay the ground for a lot of this coverage in 2023, starting in April, when you spoke with Ron Klain. Yeah, he's a former Biden chief of staff. This was a bit of an exit interview, though. Obviously, he remains powerful and can't fight. He's working for Airbnb now as chief counsel. Yes. But here's what we asked him about the upcoming elections, and here's what he had to say. I think it's a mistake to underestimate Donald Trump as a politician. He was a horrible president, but he found a way to defeat every Republican who came after him and defeat Secretary Clinton, who was an excellent candidate.

And I think that he should not be underestimated politically. I think there's only one person who's ever beaten him. It's Joe Biden. And I think that's why it's important to have the president run for election, get nominated so we can make sure he beats him a second time. I think the contrast the president is going to drive is a contrast between someone who spent four years saying we'd have infrastructure week and a president who succeeded in passing an infrastructure bill, which means we're going to have a decade of great public investment in improving the nation's infrastructure. I think the contrast between chaos and results. And I think that's the contrast. That word that Ron is using, contrast,

must be a Biden word because it also came up in our conversations with others, including former Biden insider Jen Psaki. She is a previously White House press secretary, now the host of Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC. And we had her on in September for that panel, remember, about Biden, his age and his prospects. And this is what she had to say about Biden. He's still going to be the oldest person. He's already the oldest person as president. He will also continue to be the oldest person if he's reelected. But I also think it's not the worst thing for Democrats because there are many Democrats out there who think how could anyone possibly not be Donald Trump and it's like well it's going to be

close till the end so not the worst thing I do also agree with what Frank said about this wish casting right this is often what happens in this stage of the primary which is that there is a wish and a hope for some magical purple unicorn who does not exist. And that's the stage we're in. We're not yet in the contrast stage. That's the stage they really need to get to. But you're starting to see some inklings of the contrast, the way that the president pushed back on impeachment a little bit last week, a little bit, a little bit. I think they're going to get to it probably by early next year, and we'll see kind of a slow roll of it.

But that's when people start to kind of come home historically to, like, you know what, I wanted a purple unicorn. There's no purple unicorn. This guy is better than the other guy. It's a choice. Well, she's referring there, obviously, to Biden, but also to Franklin Ford, who was on the panel. Both Jen and Ron used that term, contrast.

So, any thoughts on whether we're in the contrast phase now fully? We're not in the contrast phase. When they're nominated is when they're in the contrast phase. And then Trump's already saying a lot of crazy things. It's just not getting as much attention. He just said the poison in the blood. I'm sorry, that's a Hitler term. It really, truly is.

I know people don't like to use that. I don't like to throw that around, but that's who used it most effectively, unfortunately. And he's usually saying a lot of really unpleasant things that are, once people start to pay attention, Biden can point to it. I think there's a contrast. I think that is exactly, it's a choice. And then I think a lot of young people, even though they're like, I don't like Biden, they look at Trump and he says, poison in the blood and this and that. And says, you know, do you want Uncle Crazy or do you want old, old, calm Gramps? And I think the more they push that, the more you see Trump, which you will see a lot of him very soon, the more it will be troubling to independents, I think, not this guy again. Yeah. Well, let's see if any of our former folks run for a third-party seat like Liz Cheney. Let's see. Obviously, a lot has changed since that panel in September, including

the Middle East and that, you know, even the Biden administration's position is changing on that as we're taping this. But another panelist on that conversation talked about this, like the lack of enthusiasm amongst voters. And that was Ested Herndon, our former colleague from the New York Times. All voters. All voters. All voters. Nobody likes this choice. But it is what it is. It is what it is. Somewhere on some golf club, someone's really excited about this election. I don't think so. I think even those who really, they would wish there were new faces here. Yeah, it is very tough. But as Ted Herndon, national politics reporter from The Times, pushed back against the usefulness of the comparative arguments. Let's hear a clip from him. I think Biden and the campaign are clearly going to make a kind of comparative argument that's

been laid out here about them versus Donald Trump. But it's like never expressed like that. It's that he was elected in the sense of an emergency and they didn't really think he would last this long. Like it's not that complicated. I think it's a persistent problem because there's nothing that putting him out on the trail can do about that. In fact, putting him back on the trail

only reminds him of that fact, right? And so I don't think necessarily that for the majority of people at least I talk to that they think Biden and Trump are the same. But it's that they think that the fact that the political system has produced these results has made them feel disconnected. third party. I hear about, like, we have a record number of people just mentioning other options without even getting them in polling. And so I'm saying it's not necessarily to me that it is expressed in kind of flattening Biden and Trump to the same, more so than it is a kind of dissatisfaction, it just continues a dissatisfaction with both parties, right? And I'm saying that's the thing that I don't think we know how that plays out in the next year.

I think he's dead on about that. I think he's right. There's this set of facts. How does it manifest itself? And I think that's very clear. Again, both Democrats and Republicans feel that way. If you really press them. It's not just disenchantment from the candidates.

It's disenchantment from the whole political system is what Estad is talking about. I think he was saying, how did we get here? And how the fuck do we fix it now, right? Yeah. People who are thinking about that a lot are ousted Republicans. And this year, I think, you've spoken to a lot of Republicans. I don't think you've spoken to as many Republicans since the 1980s, Kara. I talk to Republicans all the time.

We had Liz Cheney on last week. Before that, we had Congressman Ken Buck on, who I think has become your tech's BFF. that, we had Congressman Ken Buck on, who I think has become, you know, your tech's BFF. And someone, he said he's so ashamed of the party, Ken Buck, that he won't be running for reelection this year, which... Very conservative person. It's really quite something. There's a lot of people falling out. And I think probably in January, you're going to see a ton of people falling out of the races. And that's going to be, that'll be a big factor people haven't talked about yet. Well, maybe we're going to see some fresh faces actually through this process. Maybe, or else we'll have even crazier people. More Marjorie Taylor Greene's, fresh Marjorie Taylor Greene faces, I'm kidding. But Adam

Kinzinger was one of our guests. He was on, he was obviously Cheney's counterpart on the January 6th committee, the only other Republican to be on that committee. Let's play a clip from that interview, which was taped live at the Texas Tribune Fest. Here's what I think from an alliance perspective needs to happen. Yes, the old kind of the godfathers of Never Trump, the sons of Never Trump, the newer ones, you know, like me, the people that are yet to come, and frankly, Democrats, left wing, everything, we have to have an uncomfortable alliance on democracy. Because this is a moment... Sure, there's a lot of things that divide us. And there's a lot of issues like tax rates,

whatever else, all these issues. We can discuss those for a long time if we have a democracy. And my concern right now is truly that we're at a point where we could see democracy fail. And so while somebody on the left and right may not agree on any issue at all, if they agree on democracy, that's where I think we need to see an uncomfortable alliance. Yeah, uncomfortable. It is. He's right. He's right. But do you think that uncomfortable alliance will be able to survive the ambitions of politics, of politicians? Yes, of course. Yeah, 100%. What's happening

behind you by the way sorry all the kids are downstairs they were doing something i think they were just so excited for the uncomfortable yes there's like a cheer but there are two voters down there is if they don't go to the polls they're in big trouble with their mother well they will go uh one thing that's in the way here fox news one to watch something we covered heavily last year um, we saw last April the Dominion defamation suit gets settled to this tune of almost $800 million. The quick demise of Tucker Carlson at the network. The, you know, supposed retirement of your old friend, Rupert Murdoch, or as you call him? Uncle Satan. Do you think they'll dump Trump before election

day? No. They'll do whatever's good for their ratings. That's what they'll do. And we asked this question to Jake Tapper, Maggie Haberman, and others. How do you think the media should cover former President Trump in 2024? I think they have to call out things like poison in the blood. When he was saying a bunch of things, they were sort of soft-pedaling a couple things he said. I think they cannot soft-pedal the things he's saying and saying, the last person who said this was Adolf Hitler, and this is what happened. The last person who said, I think you've seen it a lot. I saw Caitlin Collins really push back against Senator Ron Johnson really heavily and saying, well, he kept

saying sort of vague things. And she said, give me an example. He couldn't, he didn't have any. And then they sent them and they were all wrong. Like she fact-checked. And I saw Abby Phillip do that. These are both on CNN in real time, like with Vivek Ramaswamy. You're seeing a lot of like, no, that's not true, and doing a lot better at it than they used to. You know, I'm seeing a lot of that. You're seeing a lot of that. My question is, are people on the other side, are people elsewhere seeing a lot of that? The part of the challenge isn't just the coverage. It's also how that coverage gets disseminated, obviously, through social media and everything. Well, the Fox News viewers are not.

Fox News viewers are not. Yeah, they're not saying that. What's the solution to that? I don't think there is. It's the swill they want to dish up to their viewers. That's the way they're going to do it. You know, I think they're less, they're nervous because of the lawsuits. So they will be more careful to their viewers. That's the way they're going to do it. I think they're less, they're nervous because of the lawsuits. So they will be more careful to be accurate. And I think they do, you are seeing that. But they certainly, the other night when something massive happened,

I can't remember, they had a thing on that was so not about it. It was about, it was some weird little story. And I'm like, that's not what everybody else is covering right now. And so I only saw it because my mom was watching it. The way out is actually you confronting your mother. That's the whole thing. I think she's aware of Trump's problems. I think they're, but they're getting it in dribs and drabs. They're not getting the whole thing. I don't think she knows about a bunch of things he said. They just don't put it on there. And I don't think we know. I mean, sometimes I turn on Fox News and watch and I'm like, the Hunter impeachment.

I'm seeing so much more information. It's all, that's what they're talking about. You know what got through? The Texas woman, the abortion. That got through. That did get through. That got through to everyone. That got through.

My mom was very upset about that because she's, I wouldn't say she's pro-abortion rights, but I wouldn't say she's against it either. You know what I mean? Like, she thought that was terrible, what they did to that woman, and thought they were crazy. So, there you have it. That's, well, that's something I guess many people can agree on. Let's see how it pays off at the polls. And hopefully we'll get, you know, we'll drag Donald Trump onto this show. Yeah, that would be great. In real time. Anytime, Donald. Army of fact checkers. Yep, we will. Anytime, Donald Trump.

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind.

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You need Indeed. Cara, you knew we could not end this wrap-up episode without talking about Elon Musk. Yeah. One of the letters we most frequently get from people is they say, why do you keep talking about Elon Musk. Yeah. One of the letters we most frequently get from people is they say, why do you keep talking about Elon Musk? Why do you, you know, why are you talking about Elon Musk? Don't give him a this.

We get it on Pivot too. Yes, exactly. But one of our guests this year did a powerful job articulating why. Ronan Farrow. This was in a panel we had about his New Yorker article. It's called Elon Musk's Shadow Rule. And we had him on the show for a panel conversation with Puck's William Cohen as well. Let's hear from them. You mentioned that

you spoke with more than 30 of his current and former colleagues, a dozen people in his personal life, and many government officials who admit to living, quote, off his good graces, treating him like, quote, an unelected government official and one Pentagon spokesman even saying to you, quote, we'll talk to you if Elon wants us to, which was that to me was the most chilling quote in the whole thing. You know, I, I too felt that that was really, really important. In all my years of reporting on national security stories, I have not had senior officials in, you know, important national security sensitive offices answering questions about important national security sensitive matters, in this case, what was

happening in a military conflict on the ground, by saying, we're going to seek permission from a private mogul. So I think that does reflect the entire theme. And there is a need to talk about some of the difficulties and the dangers in this much of a concentration of power. I think the beauty of what Ronan has brought to bear here is to show us, you know, the power that the really unprecedented situation with, you know, Elon Musk, you know, controlling the communications in Ukraine, being the one to ferry astronauts up to the International Space Station to put up on this unbelievable number of satellites. By the way, you know, to see it in the sky is incredible. I mean, you really scratch your head saying, what the heck is that?

Yeah. Someone just said that to me the other day. Google it and figure it out. And then you can say, okay, it's just Elon being Elon. But there's really, it's totally unprecedented. And, you know, it's sort of like a natural, unfortunately, extension of our capitalist system, you know, late-stage capitalism where somebody amasses this huge amount of wealth by controlling these companies that sort of are exploiting opportunities, as you said, where the government, you know, has sort of failed us. Obviously, Elon did not amass this power that Ronan and Bill and others, including yourself,

have been talking about overnight. So, what do you think it is about 2023 that put that on the map in such a clear way? Was it Twitter? Twitter, obviously. It was Twitter. I think people were really not paying attention to him in that regard and thought he was competent, right? And so I think he started to show some really problematic issues around how he expresses himself. Yeah. I would add to that. I think Ukraine and what he saw, Ilan, at the end of 2022, starting to voice his perspectives on Ukraine and then... Yeah, on Twitter.

...the reporting on Twitter, but also the fact that he controlled Starlink access, right? Or he had the decision to keep it on, turn it off. I guess. I don't know. He's been very powerful for a long time. But you got to hear from him all along. What he's saying is also different, right? No. I think he had elements of this, as I said.

I think he had elements of this. I think he's curdled. He curdled over COVID. I just feel like that was a line for him. And I know people said he was bad before that. Okay. I agree some of the was bad before that. Okay. I agree. Some of the stuff around the factories was problematic.

But I think COVID, the pedo thing, it started to get troubling then. And then it just kept going, you know, and that stopped. And, you know, you didn't see it every single day. It's a little like Trump. You see him every single day saying something crazier and crazier. So I think that's really the issue. Well, one journalist who spent a lot of time with Elon over the last couple years and who you thought did not grapple enough with the evolution or devolution of Elon Musk was Walter Isaacson. We interviewed him twice, once in March of 2023 at the New Orleans Book Festival and once again this fall when the Elon biography was out.

Let's play a clip from each of these. Here's March. I mean, I don't think that what drives him is narcissism. Okay, tell me. I think that this is going to sound—actually, you'll probably get it and believe it. He is driven by a sense of mission, and there are three or four missions, some of which are just so ethereal, such as humans have to be a multi-planetary species because consciousness will die out if we don't become multi-planetary before the window closes on this planet. I mean, did you buy it, by the way?

No, it was nonsense. It's about, it's because he's a narcissist. No, I don't buy any of it. I don't buy it or believe it or buy it. I think he's a narcissist. He's turning into a malevolent narcissist, but he's a narcissist. And that's, he thinks he's ready player one, as Ben Mesrick said. And he thinks he's the center of the universe. And if he doesn't save the world, I think Sam Altman got it a hundred percent right about him. I think Sam Altman's quote to us was, he's the center of the universe. And if he doesn't save the world, I think Sam Altman got it 100% right about him. I think Sam Altman's quote to us was, he's a jerk. Yeah. But not just that.

He wants to save the world, but only if he's the one to save it. It's called a narcissist. Here's Walter in September. He had him back on. And I don't think he bought it this time either. Let's play a clip. You use the word man-child in the book. I have used the word adult-toddler to describe Elon.

I do grok that childhood defines us. I absolutely do. I think it's critically important. But do you worry this framing of Elon as a child absolves him of the accountability he deserves as a 52-year-old man? Well, A, it doesn't absolve him. So let me make that clear. And I think it's clear in the book with many anecdotes that you, but this is a complicated thing. And I think you and I talked about it in New Orleans back when we were eating crawfish and drinking whiskey, which was

when you understand a person, in other words, you try hard to understand. Does that morph into a gray area where you're trying to justify? And I kind of try to understand the demons that dance around in his head. Does that justify him being an asshole to people? I hope I can say no, no, no, no, no. But part of the job of a biographer is say i want you to understand where all this is coming from yes i get it but you also allow everyone else to say it as if it's the only thing and every time i read one of them saying oh but it's his demons whether it was grimes or whatever i'm like get him to get therapy for fuck's sake like you know he doesn't go to therapy

no really you're kidding you're kidding you're kidding. You're kidding. You're kidding. You know, I was trying to get to it. You know, the problem with Walter is, and I get what he's saying here, but it's so romantic. And why do we give this guy so much, like, of a pass constantly? And, you know, I thought this was such nonsense from Walter, and I still think. We're going to be talking again in New Orleans for my book. No, you wrote the book. You wanted him to write the book. You wanted to write those.

You wrote the book. Burn book. You wrote the book. You wanted him to write the book.'m sorry to say, but everything I said would happen, happened. Everything Walter says that he would, you know, you know, moderate himself, it's gotten worse and worse and worse. And whether it's anti-Semitic, promoting of anti-Semitic things,

whether it's telling advertisers to go fuck themselves. So the thing that I find most problematic is actually these lawsuits that he's taking up against people to kind of clamp down. I mean, the free expression warrior, just, you know, trying to shut down. What a shock. What a shock. He's an incredible hypocrite.

That's what he is. Yeah. I mean, we talked about having Alex Stamos on the show. Well, good luck. I mean, it's hard to get. You can't talk about it. You can't talk. Yeah.

Can't talk about core subjects now because of Elon's free speech lawsuits. Yeah. I hear Clara. Kids are still making noise. It's okay. There she is again. Talking about free expression, Cara. I know, right.

Muzzle the child. There's too many of them to keep quiet. Well, one person who has shifted a lot in her seat during an interview with Julia Borstein at this year's Code Conference was Linda Iaccarino. Yes. Speaking of enablers, speaking of most enabling enabler. Yeah, you said it's white men. Yeah. And this lady. And her son. Anyways, well, Linda Iaccarino, of course, is Twitter's CEO or Sino or CEO name only. Care to explain the context of what went down at the September 2023 Code Conference. The only context is she's CEO of a company and she should be able to handle a little pressure.

What happened was we lost Mary Barra as a speaker because of the strike, the UAW strike. The GM CEO. Yeah, the GM CEO. And so I had to replace her. And I'm not running the Code Conference, but I brought in Yoel Roth because I thought it'd be an interesting contrast to Linda Iaccarino. We told her

far enough in advance to understand it. He also didn't say anything as you listen. When you started to listen together, that was anything he hadn't said before. Yoel, of course, worked for Twitter as head of trust and safety. And he left after a few weeks into the Elon regime. And then Elon attacked him and so subjected him to death threats and all kinds of doxing, etc. So I think Yoel is really rather calm considering what happened. And Linda lost her mind on the stage of code. She just melted down in a way that was really problematic for someone who claims to be a CEO. Let's play a clip from each of them so listeners can hear. What advice would you now give to Elon and what advice would you give to Linda?

I'll start with Linda. I read the profile of her in the Financial Times by Hannah Murphy, and I was really struck by her talking about the challenges that she experiences with abuse and harassment targeting her. And I truly feel for her. I genuinely, genuinely do. Nobody should have to experience that. Not a CEO, not a journalist, not me, not anybody. Look at what your boss did to me it happened to me it happened after he's saying my praises publicly it happened after i didn't attack him i didn't attack the company i i quietly left you wouldn't talk to me i know that and then he did that to me if not for yourself for your family for your friends for those that you love, be worried. You should be worried. I wish I had been more worried. And so I hope she is thinking about what those risks are and

what she might face. Shortly after that interview of Yoel Roth by you, Cara, there was the interview of Linda Iaccarino. Yeah, by Julia Borstein, who did a terrific job. Let's just underscore that. Yeah, by Julia Borstein, who did a terrific job. Let's just underscore that. Yeah, did a fantastic job. Yoel and I don't know each other. He doesn't know me. I don't know him.

I work at X. He worked at Twitter. X is a new company building a foundation based on free expression and freedom of speech. Twitter, at the time, was operating on different sets of rules, as said by himself, different philosophies and ideologies that were creeping down the road of censorship. It's a new day at X. And I'll leave it at that.

It's a new day. What a codswallop. I have to say, it's nonsensical. It's not kind. He was very kind to her. She was not kind to him. And this idea that's so grandiose that it's a new day. Twitter was literally the free speech part side of the free speech party on the internet. Now, this ideology, I think she was making a, you know, oh, they're liberals. It's just not, this is just, this was a nonsensical interview she did. It was really a disappointment for anyone who watched it. And, you know, anyone who works there.

I mean, shocking not just in her response to Yoel, but also in the conversations when Julia asked her about Elon's, you know, or about her relationship with Elon. And Linda said, well, we talk all the time. And then Julia was like, well, what about when he said this? Oh, well, what he did what? It besides catching her, look, even just catching her on,

but clearly she's not in charge of the company, it's so obvious, is that she's making excuses almost. No matter what he does, it's, you know, when he says, advertisers go fuck themselves. Well, Elon's done a great job today in this interview or says anti-Semitic things.

We're against anti-Sem, it's just like, stop, please. It's painful to watch. And I thought what was important to put those energies together is when you hear them together, you're like, oh, and that's all you have to do. You don't have to have an opinion.

You can think whatever you want. You just have to go, oh, and that's why it was so powerful. And that's, she did not rise to the occasion. That was the reason we stayed up till 3 a.m. that night. Yeah. You guys did a great job putting up that. You guys did an amazing job putting it together.

Anyways, Carol, I'll ask you a question you asked Yoel. Any advice to Linda Iaccarino for 2024? She should quit now. What Yoel said, pay attention to what's going to happen to you. So that's what's going to happen to you. And I've asked you this before, I'll ask you again. Any advice for Elon? No, we're done. No, I'm not going to help him. Get therapy. Get some therapy. That might help you. Probably not. If he came in for, if he was up for, you know,

an interview in 2024, would we take it? Would you take it? I'd have to think hard. I'd have to think really hard. Probably, but because I'll interview anybody, I guess. Low bar. Well, it is a low bar. I'll interview anybody. It would be a difficult interview, I would say. It would be a very difficult interview. He has a lot of grievances. It'll be an expression of grievances, the airing of grievances. Yeah. And I don't want to air grievances at him. I just want him to stop. Like, please stop damaging the body politic. What would be your first question?

No idea. No idea. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? That's not nice. What is right with you? Yeah, that's a positive rendition.

Walter version. What's right with you? That, that's a positive rendition. Walter version. What's right with you? That's what I made first question. I think going really in depth with him about free speech actually, I would be so curious. It's such nonsense, no, because he'd have such bullshit nonsense. I think actually one of the things I saw in the Andrew Ross Sorkin interview at Dealbook was that Elon was willing to respond back to the, like basically regurgitate the question back to Andrew in a very clear way. He wasn't evading the question.

He understood the questions that were being asked of him. I think if we went into kind of the tactical nature of, like, if you believe in free speech, why are you filing these lawsuits? Why are you filing? And he might even, I wouldn't be surprised if he yielded. But, you know, Kara, you're so shrill, he says. I'm shrill. Even dogs can hear me. Only, only dogs.

Yoel is evil and my heart is seething with hate. Well, woof, woof, Elon. Come on over in 2024. I don't think that about you, Elon. I don't think your heart is seething with hate. I think it's seething with a lot of troubles. Well, I would be very excited to hear that interview. We're going to end now.

I just want to ask you, is there anything we didn't play? Anything, anyone you missed hearing in this best, in this kind of look back episode? Barry Diller. My Barry Diller interview was really fun and actually interesting and substantive about it mixed AI with entertainment, with the Hollywood scene, with the strike. And just one of these, you know, he's a, he wouldn't like me calling him this, but he's such an old crocodile. He really gets it. Like he's just gets it. He just, he's just, I, you know, I had one reporter saying, what are they talking to him for? I said, cause he's smart because he gets it and he's on, he knows what's going on and has some real insights. And he's so, he's so beyond, he doesn't give a fuck. So he says it. So I appreciated that.

I'm so glad you chose that because I didn't know that that's what you were going to say, but I actually pulled a moment of that interview, which is probably my favorite moment of 2023, that rat fuck of an episode with Barry Diller. Let's hear it. Let's do a mini antitrust lightning round. You said Google is an absolute monopoly. You want it regulated, not broken up. Why? Why what? Why do I not want it broken, not broken up. Why? Why what? Why do I not want it broken up? Why do I want it regulated?

What do you want to know? Well, why? Tell me why. Why do you call it an absolute monopoly? Well, honey, forgive me. The word monopoly ought to cover it. When there is a monopoly, you have to have regulation. Full stop. Yeah.

Honey, forgive me. I don't, listen, I would mind that from a lot of people, but not him. It was a great honey. I'll take that honey any day of the week

with Barry Diller and twice once a week. Thanks, honey, for a great interview. Thanks, darling. On that note, Kara, mind to read us out? Absolutely.

Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Kristen Castro-Wiesel, Kateri Yochum, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Andrea Lopez-Grizzato, Mary Mathis, Aaliyah Jackson, and Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, forgive me, honey. If not, no forgiveness for you. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York

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