Tristan Harris

There have been many examples in history when countries actually collaborated on their existential safety.

The Soviet Union and the US during the Cold War, during the smallpox sort of breakout, they collaborated on smallpox vaccines while they were in the Cold War.

India and Pakistan were in a shooting war in the 1960s, and they signed during that time the Indus Water Treaty to collaborate on the existential safety of their shared water supply while they're shooting bullets at each other.

The Soviet Union and the US did the first arms control talks after the film The Day After, by the way, which created the conditions in part for those arms control talks to prevent a dangerous nuclear outcome that was an existential scenario.

And even just two years ago in the last meeting that President Biden had with President Xi of China, President Xi requested to add one thing to the agenda.

Do you know what that was?

to keep AI out of the nuclear command and control systems of both countries.

Meaning that, look, the US and China are maximally cyber hacking each other and they're screwing each other up every day.

And when there's a set of stakes that are existential, two countries that are even in conflict can collaborate on existential safety.

I'm not saying this is easy.

I'm not saying it's going to happen by default.

I'm not saying you should feel optimistic.

I'm saying...

What would it take for that to happen?

And you start by asking that question and say, how would everyone live if we were in service of that thing that needs to happen and to actually happen?

Does that make sense?

It is.

Max Tegmark, I think, said the problem with AI is the view gets better and better right before you go off the cliff.

Like you get more amazing cancer drugs.

You get more incredible vibe coding tools that allow people to create crazy stuff that I benefit from.