Siliconsciousness: How Can Democrats Get Their Act Together on AI?

"The absolute macht is the sound of life."

“"Dine Reich wird unbezzwing was a renier."”

"Stream, the new Staffel, House of the Dragon, at 22nd June, with wow." "Freud ich auser dem auf Staffel 1 und 2 der Volksserie und weitere Highlights." "Es wird kein Zweifel geben."

"Bein die Götter zum Herrschnauser Welt haben." "Brachen heiß, zum besten Preis." "Jetzt ab 2, 2018 im Monat." "Gear of Worte for the E." "Streaming" war noch nie so wow."

"Welcome to Silicantiousness. The DSR network podcast focusing on the Artificial Intelligence Revolution, Politics and Policy." "Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Silicantiousness, where we talk about what's going on in AI Tech and related worlds.

On this week, I'm extremely pleased to say that we have as our guest, Karen Cornblut. She's the former director of the National AI Office

“and formerly the Principal Deputy of the White House Chief”

Technology Office. She served as U.S. Ambassador to the OECD. I Karen, how are you? "I am good, good to see you." "It's very good to see you.

I thought it would be good to talk about a few things that are in the news this week and use them as springboards to talk about bigger topics. And I'll just take them in a random order. But yesterday there was an article in the New York Times

that focused on Americans' attitudes towards AI. It was called "There's one clear reason. Americans are gloomy about AI." It's why I got in Paul Kadroski, who's a venture capitalist. And it's a subject I know is on your mind.

I know when you were working in the Office of AI back in the day. There was a little bit of a kind of-- I don't know, there was a buzz. This was a positive thing, great new technological change. And in just the course of the few years since,

we've gotten to the point where the majority of people under 40 don't like or trust AI, where AI is associated with right-wing tech brews and supporters of Trump and in scene is kind of a mega plot by some people. And where Americans just aren't looking at it

the same way the rest of the world is. And I thought you'd be a good person to talk to to try and help figure out why that's the case. Well, I'm really glad you brought this up. So the social contract, not being up to date.

For-- no, I mean, the American social contract

was always dingy to begin with.

It was always focused-- it was a little racist. It was a little sexist. It was focused on people who had a good job. So if you were employed in an auto factory, you got your health care and your pension through your employment.

And the assumption was your wife and your whole family would be taking care of the AU and that you'd get social security and a pension when you were tired. So it's always been structured around this industrial bread winner family.

But it's also been really stingy compared to most other countries. It's meant to keep you out of poverty, unless you had that top up from the employer. And it just doesn't work anymore. When we've got to gig work and temp work, when people

are switching jobs all the time, when there are two people working and ever-- or a single parent working and every family. So it was already out of date. In fact, when I went to work for a senator, you may have heard of Barack Obama.

When he was first elected to the Senate,

the reason he asked me to come work for him was because I'd been thinking about those topics and he was thinking about them. Or in this global economy, the social contract isn't working. And that argument features in his audacity of hope.

I went on to write the platform in 2008, it features there. But we didn't really get a chance to update it. The financial crisis happened and so on. But now it's really urgent. I mean, AI is going to turbocharge all these problems

because you're going to need to retrain. You're going to need to start up a new job. It's going to undermine a lot of those good jobs. The upper middle class jobs in the professional services. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects.

“And I think one-- so I totally agree with this article--”

the one aspect that the column and most folks miss is that the rise of digital companies themselves have exacerbated the funding shortfall. And I can get into that if you want.

and in Washington, is that Republicans were quite high on the run supply, they're cutting the safety net. So they're cutting Medicaid. They're cutting people off of food stamps. And Mike Johnson is said he wants to cut Social Security

and Medicare if he is still the majority of the year. So this is in a way an opportunity for Democrats to say, without sounding like Nanny State old school. They can say, look, we want to make the economy. We want to make government AI ready.

We want to make sure you're AI ready. We want to give you the supports you want. And these guys want to cut it.

“Democrats aren't grabbing that, which I think”

is just political malpractice. And if you think about one of the things

that made Trump interesting when he was first running,

he was a Republican who said I don't want to cut Social Security Medicare. And I think one of the under-appreciated stories of the end of the first Trump administration and the Biden administration is that there

were all these COVID increases in the Social Safety net. So we increased the child tax credit, Obamacare subsidies, and so unemployment insurance. And those were allowed to expire under Biden. And somebody just did, I'll just say, one other thing

and I'll stop joining on, somebody did a study to a economist to a study. And they found that for every $1,000 a family lost in child tax credit, they're consumer sentiment declined by 1.7 points for a full two years.

So you can understand some of the upset about the Biden economy as the safety net training away.

“But I think this is a very important and important topic.”

This podcast is underwritten in part by the U.S. Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. Its editorial content is completely independent and the views expressed are exclusively those of participating experts.

It is presented live without editing. For further information about the UAE's efforts in the areas of artificial intelligence and technology, go to the website of the embassy at www.ue.edu. Ask embassy.org and search for UAE-US Tech Cooperation.

We thank them for their support. We thank everybody who is supporting this podcast for their support. And we look forward to it developing and growing over time because the issue is so important.

Yeah, let's pull it back a little bit to AI specifically. And this weird thing has happened, right? You were talking about the way back machine when you were working with Obama, which wasn't that long ago.

I was really in the way back machine. I was in the Clinton administration.

“And I remember when Al Gore was talking about”

an information super highway. We were talking about tech. Like this was going to be something great. This was going to be democratizing. There was a lot of hope around it.

People thought it was going to create a lot of jobs. We were naive as hell about it. There was the Telecommunications Act in 1996, and so forth, where we gave them a lot of latitude, which they have subsequently abused.

But there was, at least it was net positive as the sort of internet era began. So here we are now in 2026. And the next big thing. And in fact, a bigger thing than the internet, maybe AI.

And when you look at AI, and you ask the average person what it is.

If that person is under 40, here's what they're going to say.

And you may encounter people like this periodically. But they'll say it's bad. And it was said, what? AI is the million things. No, AI is going to take away jobs.

AI is going to take away privacy. AI is going to destroy creativity. AI is going to blow up creative industries. And what's more, AI is mega. It's Republican.

If you look at the people who are backing Donald Trump, it's Peter Teele, Palantir. It's the Allison's, it's Zuckerberg. It's Bezos. It's Mark and Dresen.

It's David's sex. They're spending a ton of money. And the president is essentially saying have that. We're not going to regulate this stuff. We're going to trust the companies to do all of that.

And then on top of that, you get into the whole set of AGI is going to destroy the world kind of arguments.

And so we're at a moment where there's a revolutionary technology.

And unlike in past instances, it's associated with one particular political party.

Right, I think it's that net that's really important to focus on.

There are positives. Obviously, there are positives or huge positives potentially. And there are big negatives. And if we don't act on net, people may have really bad experiences. When you go back to the Clinton era, the internet at that point was a competitive, it was

a tiny infant industry. And it was a competitor to the big telecom giants. And so this framework was put in place that was called late touch. We're not going to regulate and kill this infant industry that's going to democratize information and get around these bottlenecks of the broadcasters and these bottlenecks of the

telecosho, these bottlenecks of the cable companies. And then, unfortunately, we didn't update that. When they became the giants, when they became the bottlenecks for information.

“And that's even more so with AI, and I think young people who have grown up with social”

media are using AI every day, even if they're not fans of it. They don't see it as some magical tech, something that's separate that needs to be handled with killed, killed, gloves or will kill it. For them, it's like how we think of the telephone or the TV. And these arguments that if there are any guardrails that they'll be no innovation or will

lose out to China, I just think that they see right through that. And in fact, they go beyond that, like, you know, if we say to them, oh, our AI industry needs to win because we need to have American AI because that'll be democratic AI. And so, well, how democratic is it if it's being used for surveillance? You know, if it's being used for, you know, wage discrimination or price discrimination.

And they don't get fooled the way I think we've all been fooled. They sort of anthropomorphize these companies. We think of Facebook as Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, a SpaceX as an X as Elon. And surely these people, you know, will act humanely. And these are, you know, CEOs.

So I think, I think younger people see that who have, like, seen their friends get hurt by anorexia or a notification online because the companies are just, you know, try to increase their bottom line and use their algorithms to keep you online. I think they've experienced it. And they've also experienced a different country.

You know, they've experienced a country as I was saying, where you don't have a job that's going to take care of you. So I think, I think they, they get that. And I think they're a lot less nervous about the government getting involved to help them.

“I mean, that's what we're seeing when these recent, you know, election results, I think,”

in the, in the primaries where people are saying, yeah, maybe we do need more of a public sector to help us out.

And well, I mean, first of all, I think you're being very charitable.

I don't think people look at Elon and say, well, he's just a guy. I think they look at Elon and say he's, like, evil incarnate is the worst guy. And that, you know, they look at Peter T.L. And he's got his sidekick saying women shouldn't have the vote and Peter Tills put J.D. Vance in the government.

And, you know, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, they're not abstract. They're very big prominent figures. And they've all got some concerning flaws. And now what we're seeing is they're weighing in heavily in elections.

Yes. They are the crypto bros are. We've seen, you know, lifetime public servants run out of office because they didn't they ran afoul of the crypto bros. We saw just this past week in the New York, 12 Democratic primary.

Huge amounts of money coming in because one of the candidates wants to regulate AI. And they were like, oh, we don't want to have that happen. And, you know, these companies are now weighing, you know, they stayed away. In the 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they weren't in Washington. They were like, we don't need washing to washing to doesn't need us.

Now, they're the number one or number two, Spender, on lobbying dollars in Washington. And so, they are part of a changing political reality. How do you see that evolve? I mean, it's bad. You know, I'm sure you saw there was an article a month or so ago that said the Democratic

leadership was advising Democrats trying to stay out of the whole AI debate that they wouldn't provoke these packs.

“I think the lobbying and the political spending have a real impact.”

And I think part of the problem is that Democrats still tend to see tech as separate from

their manager, you know, that, you know, we can pursue our, you know, health care and, you know, affordability agenda and whatever talk about support for this industry, that is

is not a side show to helping to addressing the fears that Americans have, or to protecting

democracy. I mean, I think these are, and I think that's one of the things that young people see. You know, they're not illusion. They don't remember when Google said do no evil. So, you know, I think, I think, but I think it's going to be really tough because I think

these companies mean business. You know, and I, you can't be fooled when the Open AI

“pack says, well, we just want good guard rails. You know, that's what Facebook said after”

the 2016 election, when everything came out about how, you know, there was foreign interference, there was voter misinformation online. And they say, well, we just want good guard rails. And when a bipartisan bill, very, very modest was introduced, the Honest Ads Act,

which sort of had the normal transparency, you have on TV for social media ads, it never

got out of committee. It never got a hearing, in fact. So, I think they're very serious about blocking everything. I mean, the laws, the bills that were introduced in California in New York that were eventually modified were very modest. And they had to kill those and make them, you know, modify them to make them even more modest. And then they tried to punish the guy who, who ensponsored the New York bill. So, I mean, glad that he finished

second. And, you know, the guy who did win last year, he won that primary. He was, he was, he was a sponsor too. He didn't introduce it, but he was a sponsor. And he said that he wants

“tech regulation. So, I think there was a sort of a muddy result there, which I think is,”

is a good thing. But, we are seeing, by the way, I don't mean it or up. But, for example, the guy is, it's not an abstract issue. It's now a local issue. And you're seeing with data centers, this nimbusum and, and, and, and the average voter in the middle of Ohio is going, I don't want a data center. That's not going to create jobs. It's going to make electricity prices go up. It's going to use up water. Even if that's not true, there's

saying it. It's, and all of a sudden, you know, or AI is going to take my job or it's taking my privacy or whatever. I, all of a sudden, I think, and this is a really interesting thing to me because I've talked to you offline in the past about this, we are coming into the

first election, in which AI, I think AI is going to be a day-to-day issue for average Americans.

And I think the Republicans, because they have a jump because it sort of started during this administration, they have an alignment, they know where the money is, they know what they're doing. And I've had Democrats come up to add a very prominent, smart Democrat friend of mine come up to me. And she said, how did the Democrats lose Silicon Valley? You know, that we don't have any influence there. And we don't, you know, I don't know what the Democratic

position is on AI. I don't know who the champions are. I know there's some, I follow this closely, but I know there's some, but I, but I just, I just wonder how you think this is going to evolve in the next, like, you know, five months from now, there's an election. And all of a sudden, AI is going to be essentially a two-in-it, and most Democrats and most candidates are like, what do I do about this?

In his best form, with the new Cuba One Capsule Machines from Chibu. In every Cuba Capsule Stex Spitzen Café, from special occasions. For espresso, coffee creamer or coffee creamer of Knopfdruck. The new Cuba One will show with premium design, compact growth and small 1st price at 920 Euro. Thanks to innovative press broot technology, everyone has a special aromatics with the same price. And there

are now the Cuba Capsule Machines, in their Chibu fjale and on Chibu D.E. "Our influence for your podcast, frisches opest and knacky-gis-gimüse from Aldi. Immer gut, immer günstig, immer vielfältig, kurz gesagt frische für alle. Zum Aldi price, diese Woche, zespriki wie grünen, das Stück für nur 44 Cent, oder Mini Cherry Riesbentomaten, 500 Gramm, für nur 61 Euro, entdecke jetzt viele

weitere Angebote in Deiner Aldi Nordfiliale. Und weiter geht's, einfach lauschen und genießen. Aldi, gut ist für alle." "I hate to interrupt this thrilling podcast, but we have some exciting news at the DSR network. Our sub-stack is now live. Our sub-stack is going to be the new home for free

“and paid content here at the DSR network. The best way to support us over our new sub-stack”

is by becoming a member. Right now, there's an early bird special until the end of the month, where you'll get 30% off of a new subscription with no code required to sign up for either a free or paid subscription to our sub-stack. You can go to DSRnetwork.substack.com. That's DSRnetwork.substack.com.

things coming that we're thrilled to share with you in the future. We appreciate your support

and thank you for listening. Now back to the show." Yeah, and they're hoping they can keep their heads down and just avoid it. I think if you look at poll numbers, which obviously you have, that's not going to work. People are nervous and they saw that Washington was nowhere in helping them in globalization and was nowhere in helping them in the 2008 financial crisis and they don't want to Washington that's going to just try to

“keep their heads in sand and see what happens. But I think that's what a lot of folks want to do.”

And I think Silicon Valley is forcing a huge distinction. They thought that Biden and Democrats

were existential threat. A lot of them, not saying all of them. Obviously a lot of folks in

anthropic don't feel like that. A lot of employees don't feel like that. But Mark Andrews, in the open AI, the folks behind this super PAC that took on Boris in the New York election you're talking about. They really saw all of Biden's proposals were voluntary. There was nothing that he was really doing that would have really negatively impacted. They were convinced that Biden wanted to nationalize the industry in Mark Andrews and has said this. So they, they're not looking

for a nuanced debate. Those folks, the more extreme folks in Silicon Valley. And I think it's really, that's just really hard and it's just a reality. And so I think Democrats have to speak really,

“really, really clearly. But it's going to be, I think it's, you know, and they have to,”

I think they can start with things like the social contract because that doesn't,

that doesn't harm anybody in Silicon Valley. It's going to require, you know, that you fund it. And that's going to require, you know, somehow getting either tax money or Bernie Sanders and Trump were talking about, you know, taking equity in the companies. But Democrats are going to have to talk about some common sense guardrails. They're going to have to overcommunicate. They're going to have to go out to Washington. They're going to have to pull test how they talk about it,

focus group it. I mean, it's, it's got to be a real, it can't be left on the sidelines. It has this has to be, as you're saying, this is going to be a huge issue. I don't know if you've followed this, but there's this, the DOJ has now sided with Elon Musk against the NAACP, which is bringing a private write-of-action on it. That's probably the least surprising phrase I've ever heard of. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but they're trying, I mean, it's, it's anti-environmental act. It's

“anti-private write-of-action. It's a pro-data center. It's pro Elon Musk. I mean, I think there are ways”

to talk about this that just play off of how completely off the defend the administration is right now. Because I think they're, they're being real extremists. And I think it almost makes the Democrats' jobs a little easier, although it's a very tough terrain. I agree. Yeah. By the way, I think, you know, you opened in a way that, you know, we've been doing this show for a couple of years. You open in a way that nobody has, which is talking about social contract. And I think

that having said that, lots of people talk about dislocations associated with AI, lots of people talk about job losses, or fields that are going to be upset and so forth. And I do think there is an opportunity in and around that. And that is when you are in periods of major dislocation within an economy. The economies that have a functioning social safety net do better and are better able to take risks and adapt. And that means, so security and Medicare, which, by the way, is

supported by 85% of the American people. It also means education means training programs. It means a whole sort of set of things, which sort of plays directly into the sweet spot for Democrats. Exactly. Which is, we, you know, we have to prepare for the economy of the future. And in order to do that, we've got to provide the American people with the tools and the platforms and the protections that they need in order to be able to seize that moment. I just don't, you know, Karen, yeah,

I mean, you're like plugged in all these, but I just don't hear that kind of coherent vision. No, it's remarkable because it's a gimmie. I mean, it's, it's an agenda they support anyway. As I said, I think the Republicans are going too far and saying they want to cut Social Security Medicare. I think that, you know, and I think you can, for usually you sound a little old school when you say, you know, I want to save, you know, what FDR created.

But here you can say, no, no, this is needed for the modern economy. And here's how we need to tweak it and support it so that it will actually help you have an ability to retrain and

I mean, I think there are a couple other things, if I may, that I think are easy. I mean,

“I think, not easy, but I think are in a sweet spot. I think I think privacy, I think Americans”

really want some privacy. California has a great law now that makes it, it's not extreme. It makes it, it's much easier, you know, less bureaucratic than what Europe has. It lets you easily opt out. It means that companies can't share and sell your data. So that or you were talking about one of the worries that people have with AI. If you don't, they don't want you to. You can go on this platform and easily opt out. You can see what data brokers have your data and delete it.

I think that would be, you know, really popular. And I also think doing something about you were talking about, you know, net, you know, on net people feel like AI is bad. What are the the things that's good about AI, that the companies used to talk about all the time was,

it's going to do all these amazing things for healthcare. It's going to make healthcare delivery

more efficient and it's going to make it easier to cure diseases. But we haven't been investing in that. Obviously, we haven't, we're we're decimating the CDC, the NIH, the FDA. So we could be doing a lot of things in terms of, you know, creating incentives for companies, simplifying how they get access to public data sets, you know, all these nerdy things. But we could actually make the the good side of AI a little better instead of it being about serving more ads and

giving you more misinformation. Yeah, I certainly don't want to invite you out of this podcast to talk for a little bit about this and and or even invite you back frequently in the future and and then

head to your workload further. But let me because because the reality is this, there is a natural

coherent, positive AI policy related or new tech centric agenda for Democrats that covers a range of things. You've talked about some of them, but it can also cover protection against losses and crypto. It can also cover protections for the creative industries against the appropriation and misappropriation and intellectual property or people's identities. It can also cover providing certain kinds of things and education to help people to adapt. It can also, you know,

so. And that's a deep fakes and protecting kids and that sort of right. And there's a national security side of it. And, you know, personally, again, I think you know, talked about some of the Biden administration, but out and they said, well, we're going to do small fence as a high fence, small yard. And we're not going to let the Chinese, you know, get this and get ahead of us. And that just didn't work. You know, the Chinese are are getting ahead by leaps and bounds

because we see this as a global development. We have a new perspective. We need new thinking on not how do we keep others from getting this, but on how do we stay ahead of the game? How do we invest in the game? How do we go back into science and tech investment and undo the damage done

“by this administration? Yeah. So what I'm saying there is you need to write a big manifesto”

for Democrats to do this because it's not there. Okay. I like your manifesto on where the Democratic Party needs to go. So maybe I'll add an appendix. Well, I think it's welcome. And by the way, if it doesn't work with the Democrats, just getting it out there and having the pay attention could probably make millions because there was another story this week and how Palantir is out there ago and oh, you know, we put all our chips on the Republicans. Let's go hire a bunch of

Democrats staffers because we're going to need to talk to the Democrat. This, by the way, is happening across Washington. I see it everywhere where people are like holy shit, you know, I can't just go to a party with Jared Kushner. I have to, you know what I mean? There's sort of rediscovering how Washington used to work and are you seeing that too? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when I think it's again, like Democrats have to realize that they can't, they can't win elections and show that

they're on the side of ordinary people. And, you know, we're in a worry too much about that.

“And, you know, I think it's interesting that some Democrats have been returning Palantir money”

because I think it's starting to have that Paul cast about it. I heard you're a podcast with Senator Van Hollen and Jeremy Benjamin about APAC. You know, I think some of this Palantir money and other, other of these tech companies could start to have that sort of, uh, it's absolutely right, APAC money, corporate money, Palantir money, people, you have fossil fuel because people see the system

a lot of winners. And it's not just the, you know, Democratic Socialists in New York, it's winners

across the country who are listening to people and saying, I'm going to work for you. I'm not going to work for the entrenched power. And I'm going to try to solve your problem. And it's that

“basic. It's not ideological. It's practical. Yeah. And I think that's they need to get away from”

abstractions. They need to stop saying things like we're going to bend the curve or we're going to

have a stimulus. And it really talk about like what this is going to mean for you and your family. That's the, I, I, I feel like I had an opportunity getting rid of terms like bend the curve,

“which get policy long set, you know, the Brookings institution, like super excited.”

But mean nothing. They don't mean anything. I mean, I don't forgive me because I got friends who

were buying some of these things. But, you know, I was listening, you know, and hanging out with people throughout the bygones. And they're like, well, we need a middle-out economy. And I was like, what the hell is a middle-out economy? I don't even know what that means. We need to talk in the language people understand because these are kitchen table issues. These are basic issues. This is not, hey, let's, what is AGI? And how do I deal with it? All of a sudden, this stuff is coming home

to roost. And, and, and, and I, I don't know, I think there needs to be new thought around it. And I got to tell you, you are a great source for people to follow on this. I hope we can get you

“back to talk about it. You should write about it. Something's got to happen. And it hasn't happened yet.”

And so, um, it's something we got to track. But I'm really glad you could spend this time with us. Thanks so much, David. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Karen. And thanks, everybody. We'll be back next week. And every week was Silicocciousness, also with our AGI energy and climate podcasts. And all the stuff we do elsewhere. So, please join us for all of that for now. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye. This was Silicocciousness, a production of the DSR network.