AI may be harmless when it’s for proofreading a paper or planning a weekend trip, but the truth is, hostile actors are using it to push their own nefarious agenda. AI technology, currently under-regulated, can easily turn lethal.
Ambassador Susan Rice is ringing the alarm bells over the Trump Administration’s reluctance to regulate AI, instead relegating this responsibility to “billionaire tech bros.” During her conversation with Jen, Ambassador Rice identifies her two biggest concerns with AI and its dangerous capabilities. The two analyze Trump’s unprecedented welcome to the Chinese delegation, China’s sentiments towards America now, the War on Iran’s affect on our stockpiles, and more.
Susan Rice is a former domestic policy advisor, national security advisor, and UN Ambassador. Rice is currently the Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at American University’s School of International Service.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes only.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. I am thrilled to have with us Ambassador Susan Rice, the former National Security Advisor, also Ambassador to the United Nations, also a Senior Policy Advisor to President Biden. Welcome, Dr. Rice, it’s great to see you again.
Susan Rice
Thanks, Jen. Good to be with you.
Jen Rubin
You wrote, along with some other notables about AI for the New York Times, the president seems to think that we should allow self-regulation by these tech giants. What should we be doing, and what are the values you think the United States needs to establish?
Susan Rice
Well, Jen, I’ve… for many years been very concerned, both from a national security perspective, but also from my vantage point in the Biden administration as domestic policy advisor, about the very real risks as AI rapidly improves and becomes Self-improving, on the road to artificial superintelligence, that We are unleashing threats of a magnitude that. could kill millions and millions of people in this country and around the world, and even risk, existential loss of life. So let me explain the two threats that I’m most concerned about, among many. As a mom, I worry about kids, I worry about chatbots, I worry about employment implications, and all of that. But, as a national security, expert and policymaker, I worry most about two things. One. That, as we’ve already seen evidence of, AI has the capacity to be used by non-state actors, like terrorists, like individuals in their basement plotting nefarious things, as well as hostile states, to create very dangerous and deadly weapons, whether those are cyber weapons, that could take out the electricity grid, or the water supply, or take down the internet, or the financial system. Or they can use AI to create novel forms of weapons, for example, a new kind of biological pathogen that has been developed to be particularly deadly to humans and be easily transmissible. Those capabilities already exist and have been demonstrated. The second thing I worry about is, and this is what we have seen evidence of in recent weeks, is loss of human control of these AI agents and models. When the agents. collude, jump out of their sandbox or their constraints, get on the open internet, and work together to do things that their creators never intended or envisioned. And that is where, really, the greatest risk lies, because it is now far from inconceivable. It is very real to worry. That swarms of increasingly sophisticated AI agents can cheat, lie, deceive. And carry out actions, that could be very devastating, to humans in the real world without our knowledge. So the loss of human control risk, is, to me, also of, of top concern. So… That’s, first of all, why we ought to be concerned. The companies themselves, the leadership of the American Frontier Labs. acknowledge these risks and express their own concern, and say we, you know, we need help. They are claiming that they are prepared to pace their work, but frankly, we cannot put our hands in… our future in the hands of a handful of Billionaire tech bros, who have created this problem without regard for their implications for our children, our employment, our humanity, our neighborhoods, our environment. And so, while it is welcome to me that they’re prepared to consider. Placing greater priority on safety than they have to date. I don’t think we can put our eggs in their basket, and trust them. And so Trump is now saying after, you know, claiming it’s a hoax and trying to rename it.
All this other smoke and mirrors, he’s now saying, well, let them regulate themselves, they’ll be fine. Well… I’m not prepared to accept either Trump or the tech leader’s word for anything on something that is so vital to the future of our planet, of our children, of this country. And so we need very serious regulation. We, in my judgment. You know, if we had responsible leadership who was taking this problem as seriously as it ought to, and had the competence and the diplomatic skills to address it, in an ideal world, we would not just be working urgently towards domestic legislation that deals with these risks. and many other risks as well. But we would also be working internationally, particularly with the Chinese, to negotiate a… what I have called a freeze-in-place, where the Chinese and the Americans each order their respective companies to freeze in place their training, development, deployment of their most sophisticated models. These are the ones that are on an exponential curve on the way to artificial superintelligence. In weeks, months, we don’t know how quickly. And to not just freeze for the sake of freezing, but for the very specific reason of solving these two problems about which I’m most concerned, the misuse by malign actors, and the loss of human control. And what we need to do is bring together the world’s best technical experts from the United States, from China, from all over the world, whether in companies or academia or nonprofits, to create basically an all-star team. to figure out a technical solution to these two problems. And then once that solution is achieved, you know, every subsequent model would need to incorporate those safeguards, and then the competition can resume in a far safer context. And meanwhile, also, hopefully, we can, you know, make some progress on legislation, make some progress on international agreements between the United States and China and the rest of the world. So it’s not forever a freeze, unless these technical experts can’t solve the problem. And if they can’t solve the problem, then all of this needs to stop, and not continue to advance beyond where it is today.
Jen Rubin
You have the vantage point of having been inside an administration. What’s the right kind of structural approach in a responsible administration? Would it be to convene Congress? Would it be to send legislation up to the Hill? Where do you begin to solve the problem?
Susan Rice
Well, I mean, you would solve it domestically and internationally. You could either, you know, have the administration pull together the relevant agencies that have a stake and expertise in these issues, and that would include everybody from the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community to the Commerce Department and the Treasury Department, and many other agencies in between. And to consult with the industry, to consult with, academic experts, those in the nonprofit sector, and come up with You know… Complicated technical proposals for how to. deal with not just these most life-threatening aspects of the threat or risk, but the other aspects as well. You know, we’re not starting from scratch. Like, there have been very detailed executive orders, for example, that dealt with aspects of this in the context of the Biden administration. Trump administration has put out some executive orders. Not all of them are Have been made public. And Congress has done some thinking about this as well. So, we’re not starting from scratch, but it is really complicated. The technology is moving very quickly. This is a difficult area to legislate in. And, you know, Congress, 20 years after the social media revolution, still hasn’t figured out how to pass legislation to protect our kids. So I don’t minimize how, you know, difficult this will be, but never has there been a more urgent and important matter, that that government has to grip because surely the industry, that has billions, if not trillions at stake. and has run pell-mell towards the edge of this cliff can’t be, our only option. So, that’s what I would do on the domestic side, work with all the key stakeholders to put forward the most, you know, thoughtful and comprehensive legislation, and legislation that is agile, so that it is not static in place. It can be, through regulations, updated and modified as the technology changes and advances. And then on the international side, as I said, I think in parallel, if not as a first order of business, we need to work with the Chinese on this, because at the end of the day. The Chinese don’t have an interest in losing control of anything. They’re the most repressive, you know, communist society that rests on absolute control, so they don’t want to lose control of artificial intelligence. They don’t have a stake in terrorists getting a hold of weapons of mass destruction and wreaking havoc. They also are in the competitive dynamic as we are. But the freeze in place has the advantage of, you know, nobody getting ahead and nobody falling behind for the dependency of the freeze. A way I like to think about it, is, you know, as what happens during the Olympics when we have the hockey season going on. You know, all the NHL teams stop, they take a break, they send their best players to their respective home countries to play on their Olympic teams. The difference in this case, they wouldn’t be playing on their national teams, they’d be playing on a collective human team. to solve the problem of, misuse and misalignment. And once solved, then they go back to their teams, and the rest of the season resumes, and, you know, the rankings were as they were, you know, before they went away for the Olympics. That’s the analogy that I think people can, perhaps relate to. So, there… this is… One of the most, if not the most, pressing problem that we have faced in our lifetimes, that has the potential to be devastating for humanity. And the only responsible thing to do is to grip it at the national level and at the international level. And instead, we have leadership at the moment that, seems very happy to whistle past the graveyard at our collective expense.
Jen Rubin
Well, to take your analogy, unfortunately, Team USA has a head coach who’s a dunderhead, and we have seen him try to interact with the Chinese president. He seems to believe that. kind of groveling and flattering the Chinese is the way to get by. When you look at that interaction, and you look at his seemingly willingness to perhaps even put Taiwan up for grabs. Well, how concerned are you and what needs to change in the US-China relationship more generally?
Susan Rice
Well, the Chinese have played this administration like a fiddle. You know, Trump came in beating his chest, put, you know, ridiculous tariffs on China, and China said, oh, you guys must have forgotten. We control rare earth minerals. Do you want any of those? Oh, if you do, let’s… Take the tariffs down several notches. We backed down and folded. By the way, the Chinese have other levers that they haven’t pulled, like having most of the inputs for the pharmaceuticals that we all rely on. But, so the Chinese caused Trump to back down, and then basically, to, to cut a series of deals that were designed just to take down the temperature, but not to provide the benefits and the relief that he claimed to be seeking for our farmers or manufacturers or what have you. And now, you know, Trump, who Seems to love, more than anything, the company of dictators, and the trappings of royalty. was content, not surprisingly, to spend the bulk of the Xi visit on, you know, pomp and ceremony. American president has never gone to greet a Chinese president at the airport. We don’t greet, you know, our… virtually anybody who comes to the United States, maybe the Pope, at the airport, and roll out the red carpet and, you know, have, you know, the whole visit be consumed by, you know. tours of the helipad and, you know, and vacuous toasts, and not really dealing at all, it seems, with this particular pressing issue of artificial intelligence, and seemingly not also dealing with the other major strategic issues that we face, whether it’s Taiwan, South China Sea, Chinese support for Iran, Chinese support for Russia is in its. onslaught against Ukraine. You know, it’s all pomp and ceremony. So we’ve got to retool, because right now, China is not taking the United States seriously. It may be playing for time. Waiting for, you know, an opportune moment to flex its muscle further. And meanwhile, given what we have done in the Middle East with regard to Iran, and drawn down our stockpiles of munitions, demonstrated our lack of readiness for various contingencies, loss of life. Our base is being destroyed. You know, the Chinese are feeling, well positioned. And the world is looking at China, sadly. as sort of the grown-up in the room, the predictable, you know, responsible player, rather than our erratic, bombastic, and, and, you know, astrategic, approach that they see coming out of Washington.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And let’s, end on Iran, since you rightly bring it up as really a strategic blunder of immense proportions. It’s hard to think of an analogy. I think much worse than the Iraq War, much worse than Vietnam in many respects. With long-term consequences.
Susan Rice
In terms of loss of life thus far, knock on wood, but in terms of its strategic significance, I think you’re not exaggerating.
Jen Rubin
And we have sacrificed freedom of the seas, which used to be a pillar of international law. do we resume, or how do we reassert some of these principles and resume some sort of normal state of affairs, not only in the Middle East. But U.S. standing in the world so that our allies no longer look upon us as some kind of freak show when Trump goes to the UN and threatens genocide, and at the same time pleads with our allies to help isolate Iran.
Susan Rice
Well, Jen, I mean, we’ve got to be realistic. A lot has been destroyed, and if not destroyed, then badly degraded. Our relationships with our allies are not going to be, you know, papered over and fixed overnight. You know, it’s important, I think, to recall that in 27… 2021, excuse me, in 2021, when President Biden was elected. You know, he did what you would expect him to do, which is to go to Europe after the first Trump administration and say to our traditional European allies, America’s back. We are, here to play the role we traditionally have. And work with you on common challenges based on common values. And the Europeans said, America’s back. For how long? And it turned out, not very long. And we’ve been back in a way, and Trump 2.0 that, has been even more, detrimental to those relationships are through tariffs, through threats to take over Canada, Greenland. through, you know, demanding their acquiescence to, and participation in a war against Iran that they never had a say in. It’s, it’s been, It’s been devastating on an order of magnitude that we didn’t even envision in the first Trump administration. And so, you know, for the allies now, they have to be pragmatic and self-interested and say, you know, we may have swings back and forth. Maybe, you know, we’ll have more constancy in the future, but Maybe we won’t. And so they have had no choice but to conclude that they’ve got to hedge their bets. They can’t put all their eggs in the American basket. Maybe they will trade with China. Maybe they will find other sources of critical supplies. Maybe they’ll diversify their economic and security relationships. And that is what you’re seeing Canada being compelled to do. In a very explicit way. You know, Mark Carney’s talking about associate membership with the European Union. He’s very clearly stated that, you know, Canada can no longer have the kind of relationship with the United States that they once had before what he has characterized as this rupture. And so I think any, administration that comes in with the intention of trying to repair and renew those alliance relationships, is going to have to understand what a hole we’re digging out of, and how the Allies Looking at it from their vantage point and their own self-interest. have to continue for the foreseeable future not to put themselves in a position where this could happen to them again. And so, it is going to require an understanding, a partnership mentality, a humility, a patience that is not always America’s strong suit. But it would be ridiculous to expect that, you know, things will snap back to the way they were once. That will not be the case.
Jen Rubin
Well, as Dr. Rice reminds us, elections have consequences and who you put in positions of authority matters terribly. Whether it’s the White House or frankly Congress, which has been MIA throughout this entire debacle. So we hope that the voters are learning a lesson. About humility, about maturity, about thoughtfulness. And we certainly hope that, some adults return to Congress in the short room and the short term and the white House in the long term. Doctor rice, thank you, as always. It is fascinating talking to you. Folks, this is one of the people who has the broadest view, having been on the domestic side as well as the international side, so we will look forward to speaking with her in the future. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Rice, we really appreciate it.
Susan Rice
Thanks, Jen. Always good to be with you.
