AI worst-case scenarios – a warning from Maria Ressa
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa has spent decades defending press freedom, work that made her a target of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and left her facing years of legal jeopardy. She is out with a new book, “The Fight Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Standing Up to Dictators.”
She joins Jason to discuss the biggest threats facing democracy around the world: the ascendance of authoritarian governments, the impunity of technology companies and the ways artificial intelligence could erode our collective humanity.
00:00 Losing our humanity with AI
00:27 Jason Rezaian intro
01:37 Maria Ressa’s journalist background
02:09 Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s use of social media
02:28 Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s use of social media
02:37 Bongbong Marcos as a Star Wars Jedi Knight on Facebook
03:00 Comparing Duterte, Marcos Jr.’s use of social media with Donald Trump’s AI images
03:30 Internet commenters saying awful things vs. real life
04:00 Maria Ressa defines “digital exhaust”
04:54 Social media platforms want to keep you scrolling
05:36 Scams targeting older people
06:25 Heavy, sorry!
06:37 Frenchie Mae Cumplio remains in Philippine prison, attacks on press freedom
07:02 Maria Ressa is currently out on bail
07:31 The United States’ role in destroying norms
08:12 Death by a thousand cuts, fighting to make facts matter again
08:38 Climate change and information integrity
08:50 Maria was inspired by Minneapolis resistance to ICE
09:38 Trump administration blocking access to White House, Maria is not surprised
10:16 Is Duterte the “Trump of the East,” or is Trump the “Duterte of the West”?
10:30 Duterte banning Rappler reporter Pia Ranada from Malacañan Palace
11:30 The battle for facts
12:50 The need for regulation of AI
13:34 AI “will determine whether the Earth survives”
13:53 Hugging Face incident
14:20 AI companies not being transparent when models misbehave
14:45 What is responsible when it comes to AI
15:30 Power, pace, control
15:53 American and Silicon Valley vs. China
16:31 Maria Ressa on frontier AI models: “We do not control these new things”
17:13 AI is the new colonialism
17:37 Worst-case scenarios of AI
17:51 Iran war: U.S. bombing school because of targeting failure, possibly due to DOD AI use
18:46 AI and the threat of nuclear war
19:49 How the next generation will find meaning
20:25 What can journalists do with a “dead” business model
20:44 Large language models, Google search killing news website traffic
22:29 If you lose your journalism, you lose your democracy
23:36 Canada becoming associate member of E.U.
26:09 Why Maria Ressa is hopeful
26:58 How to defeat “tech bros and dictators”
