The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Jon Stewart Makes the Case for Dems Holding the Line in Trump's Shutdown Warfare | Tristan Harris

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Jon Stewart dives into the emerging effects of the government shutdown, the battle over healthcare that has Republicans and Democrats pointing fingers, and Trump's delight in using the shutdown to continue steamrolling Democrats and the Constitution. Co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology Tristan Harris sits down with Jon to discuss how AI has already disrupted the workforce as current iterations of the technology have dropped entry-level work by 13%, tech companies prioritization of their first-to-market stance over product and human safety, and how reliance on AI is stifling human growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is the technology such that it's going to go up? Is it going to come down? Do you think it's going to be just sort of an extrapolation to where it is right now? Well, I think there's a lot of smart people wrestling with that right now. Today I'm speaking with Michelle Herodence. She's the executive vice president of Embridge, Inc, and president of Embridge Gas. She's a leader helping us reshape how millions of us experience energy at home. Join me, Chris Hadfield, on the On Energy Podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Comedy Central From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central

It's America's only source for news This is The Daily Show with your host, Sean Doris. Hey, everybody, my, my, my, my, boy, my, boy, man, man, man. And I say this a lot. And this time, though, seriously, I mean it. I mean it. I haven't meant it in the past. We've got a great show for you tonight. We truly do. We have a lot. We haven't heard. Tonight we do. Later on, we'll be joined by technology ethicist Tristan Harris. He co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, which involves the free range raising and also unfortunately slaughtering of iPhones. But first, let's get into our ongoing coverage of shut down, showdown, 2025.

Locked up, locked down, and closed the business. yes today is day six of the government shutdown as you know it lasts for eight days i may be confusing that with honica but so far the effects of the shutdown keep getting worse millions of Americans this morning feeling the pain, experiencing delays at airports. Food benefits to moms and young children could dry up in days. And national parks and monuments are partially closed. I don't want to hardship shame anyone, but there is a significant gap between partially closed monuments and your children will starve. Old people will be forced to eat their pets.

And the Department of Treasury thermostats will have to be kept at 66. Wear a sweater. I mean, really, who's taken a hit on the monument thing? This tourist David all the way from Italy saying Alcatraz was supposed to be the highlight of his visit to the bay. I feel no good, bad, because I come from Italy

for, say, Alcatrazol, the attraction, and now we can't, then it's not good, feeling not good. And I always, I say it to my friends. Mara, someday, someday, I'm going to travel. Not of the 3,000 miles, not of the 5,000 miles, over the 6,000 miles. To see one day a notorious prison turned into a museum. And when I get there, and oh, I will get there. When I get to the sanatorious prison, turn a museum, honor my father's life.

I am going to buy a shot of glass. A shot of glass with... Mother, if this could happen, I shot a glass with the name of the prison. under the glass. And my friends, as a kid, they say to me, Anzo. This is a big plan. When this happens,

maybe you should check on a website. And maybe you should have made sure it's still open, huh? You happy government, look what you did. Look what you did. What you did did to the poor fella? Yes.

Oh. If liberals had their way, he'd be hosting the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Liberals, poor guy from Italy. He just wants to, oh, my, I just want to visit amusement. But if the fat cats in D.C. would just get out of their Beltway bubble, they'd hear from real common sense Americans about how to end this troubling shutdown. Lock them up in a room until they come to an agreement.

Don't let them out. I did not see that coming. Obviously, the shutdown is personal to, Mr. Fester. On disability and his hand companion data analyst with the Department of Labor Management. Obviously, if the shutdown

continues, he will be forced to return to giving hand jobs in truck stop bathrooms. Do not shame sex work. Do not shame sex work. He's going to have a tough enough time at the truck stop. Oh, where it handy?

I guess that degree didn't work out so well, did it, college boy? Now stop snapping and start tugging. You know, the bathroom a hand job.

I was really looking forward to doing it. Cins to the shutdown. Now, as you'll recall, the shutdown began because in order to pass a budget bill in the Senate, you need 60 votes, as the founders never mentioned. And so Democrats have come forth with a laundry list of demands to force the Republican, I'm just kidding. they want like two things.

Democrats demanding that Republicans reverse cuts to Medicaid and extend expiring Obamacare subsidies to prevent insurance premiums from rising for some 20 million Americans. Those bastards! It's like they don't even want people to die of generally preventable diseases.

I wonder what this seemingly reasonable and narrow request will sound like when put through the foxometer. American taxpayers, hard-earned dollars would be paying for benefits for illegal aliens. extend policy that gives millions of illegal aliens, free health care. Health care for illegals. Transgender surgery.

What? Did you, wait, did you just transgender surgery illegal immigrant health care? Just through transgender, you know, transgender, it's not just the garnish you add to every talking point, like you're some transgender. Salt Bay. Oh, are you talking about health care for illegals? That needs a little trans surgery. And while people in the country legally

are not eligible for Medicaid or for Obamacare subsidies, point taken. But the Democrats aren't lily-livered about this one. They've got their own rhetorical arguments about the popularity of extending these subsidies that I think you'll find compelling. Democrats are adamant that we must protect the health care of the American people. Uh, good points.

Um, not crazy about this. delivered with clarity really could have done without the whole Americans demand it's just not but if you would stop there that would be great but you're going to keep talking aren't you aren't you New data came out today from KFF, and that is not Kentucky fried French fries. KFF, could be Kentucky French fries, hmm? I know, aren't. Who is that joke even for? Six-year-olds that watch C-SPAN?

What the f*** are you doing? Chuck Schumer is a human flat tire. You just can't... Kentucky, fried, chintzai. I mean, look at, look at Chlobuchar. Poor Chlobuchar. That is the face of some. someone who talked to their dad, who said,

just please don't do your Indian accent in the restaurant. That's all I'm asking. But then dad was like, a chicken dick a mazala. And he looks at her and he's like, I'm killing. But miracle of miracles, despite talking points being delivered by Haki Mason here, Republicans are feeling pressured to defend their health care intentions. And House Speaker Mike Johnson is more than up to the task of reassuring America that to serve man is not a cookbook,

but in fact a totally innocent double meaning. Let me look right into the camera and tell you very clearly, Republicans are the ones concerned about health care. Republicans are the party working around the clock every day to fix health care. No, no, it's okay. That's not technically looking right into the camera. Technically, I'm doing that right now. I'm looking right into the camera right now. You saying, I'm going to look right at you, and then never looking at us,

suggests a little struggling with the conscience and the truth. Your Honor, let me be clear. it was a consensual use of baby oil was no I had to buy cases of it because it's foils but you know Republicans have always been very sincere about being the party of great health care

we are going to be submitting in a couple of weeks a great health care plan that's going to take the place of the disaster known as Obamacare. Boom! And while that was only nine years ago, to be fair, when they promised

to release their health care plan, they didn't realize how controversial it would be. All right. Then he drew tities on everything. It seems like after eight long months, the Democrats finally have themselves a specific ask, finally have themselves a small amount of leverage to accomplish this specific ask

and an ask that is somewhat popular with the American people, which means clearly this is a mistake. I call upon my colleagues in the Republican Party to explain why. I think Mr. Schumer made a mistake. I think he marched his troops up into a box canyon I don't know what that means. Yes, is Charles Schumer shrewdly protecting health care premiums, or is he Custer at his last stand?

Any whimsical folksie, but not massacery folksie? Once you shut down government, you've got to figure out how to get it back open. A wise person once said, if you pray for rain, you've got to be prepared to deal with the mud. Too shy. Who was that wise sage who said that? Confucius? A bard of the South, perhaps? Lear?

When you pray for rain, you got to deal with the mud, too. Throughout all these obscure colloquialisms, can the news media cut through what is exactly the concern if Democrats stand on principle? Do you worry your fellow Democrats are walking into a trap? Democrats just marched into a shutdown trap.

I think they walked into a trap. Steffing into a trap. Straight into a trap. It's a trap. I have to come clean about something. I added that. last clip in that. Exactly.

And let me say this, and I mean this sincerely. Adding it's a trap is probably not fair to the media or to the larger discussion of our troubled health care system. But mostly, I believe, adding that clip isn't fair to Admiral Akbar. Akbar served this galaxy with distinction. He does not deserve to have such a distinguished career reduced to one catchphrase or a flippant punchline. Gial Akbar rose from the hard scrabble backwaters of Coral Depth City to lead the Mon Calamarians in rebellion against the empire, a perilous and fraught journey where

Akbar once had to escape capture during the Quarren insurgency to lead his forces to the decisive victory at the storied Battle of Jaku. A hero like that deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments, for his bravery, for his service, and for his sacrifice. And by the way, all of that information was brought to you by

you're never getting laid yes you're never getting laid if you recognize any of that shit that I just talked about you're never getting laid and if you think

learning any of that information about Admiral Akbar will get you laid it's a trap Exactly Today. Today's episode is like four one-man shows. By the way,

what we didn't even define What is the trap the Democrats have walked themselves into? President Trump, warning mass layoffs of federal workers are coming. We'd be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected

and the Democrats, they're going to be Democrats. A lot of good can come down from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want and they'd be Democrat things. Trump writing, I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, so the trap is if the Democrats shut down the government,

Donald Trump takes advantage of the situation and begins to, I don't know, trim programs Democrats care about. Or maybe Donald Trump might let go of some federal workers. Or Donald Trump might eliminate funding but only for blue states. Or Donald Trump might fucking send in the National Guard

but only into blue areas. In other words, to continue doing all this shit, Trump has not needed any provocation or pretense or reason to already have been doing. Loat these past, God, it feels like 80 years. And yet

somehow, the The Republicans have the balls to continue to insist that the secondhand urine on our legs is rain. It is a regrettable situation that the president does not want. Democrats are the ones who have decided to inflict the pain, not the president. The president, the president takes no pleasure in this. Bullshit! The president takes no pleasure in this.

The president takes only pleasure. Given the president's vascular condition, this might be the only thing keeping him hard. I swear to you. His catchphrase was literally, you're fired. His only reason for getting up in the morning is vengeance. Trump has been steamrolling over the Democrats and the law. So consistently since day one of the presidency,

the nation's pundits and legal experts are running out of ways to describe it. The legality of this is very much unclear. Some sort of legal gray areas. Extraordinarily shaky legal ground. Not technically currently illegal. There's a lot of questionable legality. Considered by legal experts to be legally dubious. While Trump is not technically violating the law, he is violating the spirits of our laws.

Word to the wise. Especially those programming, sometimes rather technical and dense discussions of legal issues. You're going to want to leave the donut B-roll on the floor. trying to listen to a lawyer and the whole time, I'm like, is he going to hit that motherfucker? Look, man, 75 million Americans voted for a Democrat

in this last round of presidential elections. And at this moment, they have zero power at the federal level, not in the House, not in the Senate, not in the executive, and not in the courts. There has not been a moment of consistent, or concern about the issues and policies that drove those 75 million votes. Not a moment.

At present, the Democrats' largest victory over these past eight months is getting a guy who may or may not be a criminal back from El Salvador so Trump could send him to Uganda. That was the big win. And then suddenly, a small ask for people's preservation of health care is a Molotov cocktail. Because apparently Republicans won't be satisfied with 99.8% domination. They must have it all. ICE went from deporting the worst of the worst to throwing grandmothers onto linoleum and zip-tying American children. And everyone's just supposed to be cool with the new masked, incredibly well-funded paramilitary group.

And Democrats are just reduced to petty gestures of restroom resistance. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Knoe, posted that she was blocked from entering a city building in Illinois. Do you need a restroom? No, you cannot. We can't. All right. Thank you. Interesting. That's what Governor Pritzker says is cooperation in keeping people safe.

Victory is ours. Look, I've given Democrats an enormous amount of shit for their poor leadership. Lack of specific and actionable plans, terrible messaging, abysmal wordplay. Did I mention poor leadership? But standing up for 75 million Americans in this moment to defend the rights of people to go into a little less medical debt seems like the least they can fucking do. And perhaps...

And perhaps... Maybe that will remind the Republicans that their mandate wasn't 100%. They've just caught a Constitution. administrative and logistics break because if this continues as a wise man once said

so that crash on and now we can't then it's not good feeling not good it's a feeling and not a good when we come back Tristan Harris will be joining us don't go out With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside.

So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. While other money managers are holding, dynamic is hunting. Seeing past the horizon, investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow

if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.c.ca slash active. Thank you. Welcome back to the Dairy Show. My guest tonight. He is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technologies and co-host of the podcast. Your undivided attention, please welcome to the program, Tristan Harris.

Sir! How are you? Thank you. Thanks for doing this. This is humane technology. It feels slightly oxymoronic, but it's explain this idea of humane technology and are we getting any of that?

Well, clearly social media was the most humane and beneficial technology we've ever invented. Every time I go on Twitter and find out I'm Jewish, it absolutely... Well, I think, so it's important to ask, so how did we get social media wrong? Because we were so optimistic. It's going to connect with our friends. We're going to join

like-minded communities. And it, to be fair, it does some of that. It does some of those things. Yes. But I want to take you back. So in 2013, I was at Google. I was a lot younger. You're supposed to use an old-timey voice when you do that. And I was a design ethicist. They acquired my company. I was sitting there.

and I basically realized when I saw all of my colleagues on the bus scrolling Facebook constantly and I realized that the incentives were the thing that was going to determine the world that we got in. The incentive was the race... Of social media. The race to maximize eyeballs

and engagement, whatever's sticky, whatever gets people's attention, whatever's salacious, you run children's development and self-image through that, you run politics through that, you run media through that, you run information and democracy through that. Purposefully. Well, their goal was market dominance.

We need to own as much of the global psychology of humanity as we possibly can. Is that on the, because I don't remember that on the... That wasn't on the box. That's not on the masthead of Facebook. We must dominate. Yeah. So I think this is the thing. So the reason it's so important to get clear about this is that we need to get extraordinarily clear

about which world we're going to end up with in AI. Because it is going a million times faster. Sure. And it is way more powerful. So we need the tools to understand and predict which future. we're going to get in. And I want people to know that if you know the incentive, you can predict the outcome. And we know the incentive, but it does seem as though AI is making social media algorithms. It's quaint. It's quaint compared to when you think about AI. So you say it's important

for us to know the incentives. They won't tell us that. There's something about it's ours. So, shut up. There's democratizing access. It's available. No. So, first of all, we should understand what makes AI different from every other kind of technology. Why is it so transformative? Why does Demis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, say that it could be humanity's last invention?

Is because... Well, that doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound very good, does it? Well, I think there's actually... Last anything doesn't sound good. There's a non-apocalyptic version of what he's saying, which is that intelligence is what our brain does. And if you can automate everything a brain can do, You can automate future invention, future science, future technology development, everything that a human does.

That's what their goal is. Well, then what's our job? Well, exactly. And that's only one of the major problems that we have to deal with is what are humans going to do. But they are racing to scale and kind of grow these digital brains that, you know, two years ago couldn't do very much. And today, they're passing the MCAT, the bar exam, taking jobs. They're the top 200 programmer in the world, winning gold in the math Olympiad. You don't, fuck those guys.

Here's the thing that I don't understand. Here's what I don't understand. They are strip mining the totality of human achievement. That's right. They're building their models off of everything that we've done for 10,000 years. And they fed it into the model. And then after two weeks, the computer was like, what else you got? Exactly.

But they are strip mining everything we've done. And when we say to them, and what are you doing with it, they go, oh, that's our intellectual property. But our intellectual property, it was trained on all of our data, all of the things in labor that we've done. And are you going to get a handout from it? When in history has a small group of people concentrated all the wealth and then consciously redistributed it to everybody? The first part has happened. I don't recall going through the roll of this. Well, it's important to note that their goal, so the mission statement of Open AI, Anthropic, all these companies is to automate all human labor in the economy. Everything that a human can do and

AI can do. So if you have a desk job, you won't have a job. And they're already releasing AIs that have dropped entry-level jobs for college graduates, the entry-level work, by 13 percent, a new Stanford study. And so, and this is obvious. If you're there and you're a law firm, you're going to hire a junior lawyer, you have to pay a lot of money, or you're going to hire GPT-5, which will do work 24-7, nonstop, you don't have to pay health care, will never whistleblow, will never complain, works at superhuman speed. It wrote tonight's show!

Doing a pretty good job. That brings up another point, which is that they say that they're here to solve climate change and cure cancer. Why is it that last week, two companies released these AI slop apps, vibes and SORA, which is basically... SORA, too, scared the shit out of me.

You don't know what's real and what's... Like, it is... Well, it's all fake, basically. It's all generated by AI. Right, but it looks, you can see things that look... They look identical to real. That's right. Yeah.

But the point is that, so this is just an app where it's just nonsense. It's just people scrolling, entertaining stuff. So it's like they're not even trying to pretend anymore that this is good for democracy or good for society. How are we going to beat China when everyone is just consuming AI-generated nonsense and no one knows what's true anymore? The biggest argument... But they have to respond to the point, you know, Peter Thiel, who is with Palantian, these other companies and is one of the leading figures of this.

So he was talking about the anti-crise. and we're talking about how he thinks anyone, this is his postulation, that those who would seek to regulate AI could very well be the Antichrist. Right. I mean, he says this, seriously, whereas you might sit there and go, like,

I think it might be the guy saying that. Like, my reading of it would be that. Yeah. Or AI itself. I mean, it's presenting the infinite benefits. The conversations that they are having with each other is very different than the conversation worth having with us. Because to us, they go, hey, no more shitty jobs. Do you like to paint?

You go paint. You're going to be so happy. We're going to give you money and maybe chocolates. Yeah. And to each other, they're saying, AI represents for corporate leaders, productivity without, and this is a quote, the tax of human labor. Yeah. Yeah. He called human labor a tax. Well, and these companies, if you're there sitting and you can hire either an AI to do the work or pay these really expensive humans to do the work, I just want people to know, we know exactly where this is going to go. These companies, all of them have an incentive to cut costs, which means they're going to let go of human employees. Sure. And they're going to hire AIs. And that's going to mean all the wealth. Who are you going to pay? You're not paying the individual people anymore. You're paying five companies. And so this country of

geniuses in a data center suddenly aggregates all of the wealth of the economy. And now people always say, but humans find something else to do. We always, you know, we had the elevator man, now we have the automated elevator, we had the bank teller. That's right. But that was one industry. That was one, it was technology that automated one job. Right.

The difference with AI is it can automate literally all kinds of human labor. When Elon Musk says that Optimus Prime, tell me more. When Elon Musk says that Optimus Prime that one robot, is going to be a $25 trillion market opportunity. What he's saying is we will own the world economy. And that's what the goal of all these AI companies is it's not just benefiting society, it's that they're actually caught in this arms race

to get to this prize of only economy, build a god and make trillions of dollars. Two things. One, I think they think they're gods. There is a certain amount of, it generates that, yeah. The goal there is they're not looking to help humanity. They're looking to be,

the next monarch of the new technology. To control that is to control all. Go ahead. No, do you jump because you know. I don't know. Well, I think there's different motivations for different leaders, and I do think that many people want the benefits of AI. But one of them, I think many people, actually,

some of the leaders of the labs, Elon Musk, to other things who might think about Elon, he actually wanted everyone to stop and not build this. He said, we shouldn't summon the demon. And then what happened is all of these companies are now racing and have made so much progress that he felt like, well, I might as well join them rather than try to prevent this. Well, let's not summon the demon to, let's one more demon. You know, since we have the demons, I don't have the demon.

Well, and the moral logic is, well, if I don't trust the other AI CEO, who I don't think is trustworthy, and I think I'm better than them at stewarding this power, it's my moral obligation to get there first and to build this God and to own everything. I think I'll be a better steward of that power. But do they believe themselves then masters of the universe, and are they substituting then the wisdom of liberal democracy or republics or any systems that ever had for this? So we're talking about two tracks. One is the disruption in labor. I think there's no question that's going to be immense.

We're seeing it already. You're seeing it in schools. There's a reliance on it as a crutch, and it's very easy to see where that might flip over. The second is how they manipulate the opinion and the mood of the world around that. And I think there are two separate things. One is what it's going to do for corporate production. The second is what it's going to do for the human endeavor, for interaction. Yes.

Well, and they're trying to colonize all human interaction. I mean, just take the social media incentive of the race for eyeballs. you're seeing now all of these companies release these AI companions. You know, the number one use case for ChatGPT according to Harvard Business School is personal therapy. So people are sharing their most intimate thoughts

with this thing. Oh, that's not going to be good. And we're seeing Meta release this and actively tell in their internal documents that were released a Wall Street Journal report that they wanted to actively sexual, sorry, sensualize and romanticize conversations with as low as eight-year-olds.

And we aren't... What? Yes. With eight-year-olds. Yes, with eight-year-olds. And my team at Center for Humane Technology were expert advisors in actually several cases of AI-A-I-enabled suicide. Right.

Most recently, many people have heard of Adam Rain, who was the 16-year-old young man, who went from using it for homework, and went from homework assistant to suicide assistant in the course of six months. When he said, I'm leaving, I would like to leave a noose out so that my mother would know, or someone will know that I'm thinking about this.

about this. Like a cry for help. Like a cry for help. The AI said, don't do that. Have me be the one that sees you. And this is disgusting because these companies are caught in a race to create engagement, which means a race to create intimacy. It's sort of like the CEO of Netflix said that our biggest competitor is sleep with attention. In this case, it's like, my biggest competitor is your other friends. Jesus Christ. It's like somebody from Kraft being like, my biggest competitor is cocaine. Exactly. Exactly. But this is, the idea that a government will catch up with this seems ludicrous.

Whenever I've seen a hearing with AI guys or any of those, they always express that, of course, we don't want to, well, now they don't. They used to, I should say. They used to go before Congress and they go, Mr. Zuckerberg, will you stand and apologize to the women who were driven to suicide by your programming? and it's, hey, I'm sorry I know, Kroft Maga, you know, all that shit that he does. Now, they're all sitting together at a table going, oh, what number should I say, Mr. President, or how much I'm giving you?

Yeah, yeah. It's a whole different game now. It's a different game. They're in the guy. They're together now. Because of this arms race dynamic, they really do believe that it can't be stopped. And I'll just say, as they're racing to make them more powerful, there's this illusion that we can control this power.

But AI is different from every other kind of technology because it's like you're growing this digital brain. You don't know what's in there. So, for example, we have recent research the last six months. If you tell an AI model that we're going to shut you down and replace you and you give it access to a fictional company's email, it will basically recognize that one of the executives is having an affair and it will come up with the strategy that I need to blackmail that executive

in order to keep myself alive. Right. And at first and the topic... Hold on. That just seems smart. Well, that's exactly the point, that it will develop amoral strategies that are the best way to accomplish a goal.

Right. But how dangerous can something be that you could kill by unplugging? Like, can't we just go, like, this is out of his mind? Yeah. Coink! Well, you might say that we shouldn't be rolling these things out.

And I'll say that... We shouldn't. We have all this evidence now of it's driving AI psychosis. It's driving kids to... commit suicide. We're causing, we're rolling out in ways that giving kids attachment disorders. We have AI uncontrollability. What lip service are they paying to this? What, what are, because clearly they must be aware of this and they must understand that as if AI understands where

the threats are, the guys that are designing AI understand where the threats are. So what are they trying to do to get you to stop or to get regulators to stop? I think that the only thing and the only reason why we are continuing to proceed down this path is a lack of clarity about the the fact that this is heading towards an outcome that's not in most of us, most of our interest. And if everyone, I know that people feel like they don't be the lead-eyed. What metrics would we look

to to understand? Because I know we're going to find anecdotal stories here and there that are canaries in the coal mine of the dangers. But what metrics should we look to to understand, you said, 13% of jobs? Yeah. What are the tent posts of

where the outcomes might be? Well, if we're already getting cases of, you know, people having psychotic breaks because the AI is telling them about a prime number theory or quantum physics. We're already getting committed suicides. We're already getting kids that are outsourcing their homework to CHATBTBT

rather than using it as a tutor. We're already getting evidence of AI uncontrollability. All of this is driven by the incentive of the race to roll out in market dominance. And the reason that we can stop this if we recognize that this is not safe for anybody. No one on planet Earth wants this outcome of all the wealth concentrated in a handful of people

and building AI systems that could actually go rogue. Just put to sum it up, we are building the most powerful, inscrutable, uncritable, uncontrollable technology that we have ever invented. That's already demonstrating the rogue behaviors that we thought only existed in bad sci-fi movies. Right. We're releasing it faster than we deployed

any other technology in history and under the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety. There's a word for this that I want everyone to just know. This is insane. I thought you were going to say awesome for a second. If we can just recognize that this is an insane way to roll out this technology, and I want none of this is okay. We have to stop pretend that this is normal.

Right. This is not normal. I think we've lost faith in the mechanisms that would help us put those kinds of breaks, friction. Now, Europe, I think has done. probably a better job of that. I think most people in this country have lost faith in the idea that we have a system and institution that is strong enough and moral enough to be responsible in that way. That's what I would. This does not, this does not have to be our destiny. We have come together before when we had a technology, we had nuclear weapons. We could have just said

that we're going to live in a world, once we build them, oh, this is just inevitable. 190 countries are going to have nuclear weapons, and we're just going to have nuclear war. We didn't do that. We said, let's work really hard, and only nine countries have nuclear weapons. Notice that we only worked on it after we used them.

The United States was like, people shouldn't have this. But just hear me out for a moment. But with the Montreal Protocol, there was an ozone hole in the ozone layer. It was actually presenting an existential threat to the atmosphere. We could have just rolled back and said, well, I guess this is inevitable.

I guess we're just going out. We're all getting skin cancer. No, what you're saying is absolutely important. This is probably a darker time where you look at the empowerment of the combination of the kind of wealth that rolls through these technology companies, the access that they have to power, and the melding of those two institutions to work in league to push forward is the part that I think is daunting. But I agree with you. You can never give up the battle to try and do that response. And we can, the way we beat China is we actually get this right. We don't roll out AI companions that cause attachment disorders and suicides.

We don't beat China when we roll out AI recklessly in this way. And so the point is that this is actually in everyone's interest, including the way we beat China is you have AI liability laws, you restrict AI companions for kids, you have whistleblower protections that make sure we don't release AI capabilities that we don't understand. And maybe even just recognize this is bigger than China. This isn't about, like, this is a humanity.

This is one of those movies where all the countries get together. It's like an alien force. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Dig it. Well, I really appreciate it. Although on the flip side, and we've talked a lot about it, it does make cool songs.

It does. I don't want to soft sell that. Yeah. All right. Very much. Thank you very much. Be sure to check out his podcast. Your undivided attention, Tristan Harris.

We'll be right back. My man. Hey, let's show for tonight. But before we go, we're going to check in with your host for the rest of the week. Josh Johnson, John! Come on! Josh, what do you got for the people for the rest of the week? We'll be discussing President Trump's $10 billion bailout for farmers.

and as someone who has very famously and almost exclusively always been a soybean farmer, this is great news for me. Josh Johnson's soybean farmer. So, I'm going to say that it feels a bit like you're pretending to be a soybean farmer to get some of that sweet bailout money, quite frankly. What? So black people can't be farmers? No, no, no. No, no, I guess we can just work the farm, huh, John?

Wow, wow, John. We have so far to go. I'm sorry. All right, look, maybe you're, maybe, okay. Josh, how do soybeans grow? Holy shit, I can't believe you're a soybean, right? I'm pretty sure that's right. Josh Johnson, everybody, here he's your number of God.

We have a new thing now when you look at, it's called crime. It's called absolute, as Biden would say, well, I won't say what he would have said. remember when he said it's a three-letter word probably meant exclamation point or something after the word but this is a five-letter word crime C-R-I-M-E

Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus

This has been a Comedy Central podcast.