RADIOApril 22, 2025

The Future of AI: Who Will Hold Power Over the Army of Geniuses?

AI development companies like OpenAI and Google DeepMind are in a “reckless race” to build smarter AIs that may soon become an “army of geniuses.” But is that a good idea? And who would control this “army?” Glenn speaks with former OpenAI researcher and AI Futures Project Executive Director, Daniel Kokotajlo, who warns that the future is coming fast! He predicts who will likely hold power over AI and what this tech will look like in the near future. Plus, he explains why developers with ethical concerns, like himself, have been leaving these Silicon Valley giants in droves.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So we have Daniel Kokotajlo, and he's a former OpenAI researcher. Daniel, have you been on the program before? I don't think you have, have you?

DANIEL: No, I haven't.

GLENN: Yeah. Well, welcome, I'm glad you're here. Really appreciate it. Wanted to have you on, because I am a guy. I've been talking about AI forever.

And it is both just thrilling, and one of the scariest things I've ever seen, at the same time.

And it's kind of like, not really sure which way it's going.

Are -- how confident are you that -- what did you say?

DANIEL: It can go both ways. It's going to be very thrilling. And also very scary.

GLENN: Yeah. Okay.

Good. Good. Good.

Well, thanks for starting my Monday off with that. So can you tell me, first of all, some of the things, that you think are coming, and right around the corner that people just don't understand.

Because I don't think anybody. The average person, they hear this. They think, oh, it's like social media. It's going to be like the cell phone.
It's going to change everything. And they don't know that yet.

DANIEL: Yeah. Well, where to begin. I think so people are probably familiar with systems like ChatGPT now, which are large language models, that you can go have an actual normal conversation with, unlike ordinary software programs.

They're getting better at everything. In particular, right now, and in the next few years, the companies are working on turning them into autonomous agents stop instead of simply responding to some message that you send them, and then, you know, turning off. They would be continuously operating, roaming around, browsing the internet. Working on their own projects. On their own computers.

Checking in with you, sending messages. Like a human employee, basically.

GLENN: Right.

DANIEL: That's what the companies are working on now. And it's the stated intention of the CEOs of these companies, to build eventually superintelligence.

What is superintelligence? Super intelligence is fully eponymous AI systems, that are better at humans at absolutely everything.

GLENN: So on the surface -- that sounds -- that sounds like a movie, that we've all seen.

And you kind of -- you know, you say that, and you're like, anybody who is working on these.

Have they seen the same movies that I have seen?

I mean, what the heck? Let's bring -- let's just go see Jurassic park. I mean, ex-Machina. I don't -- I mean, is it just me? Or do people in the industry just go, you know, this could be really bad?

DANIEL: Yeah. It's a great question. And the answer is, they totally have seen those movies, and they totally think, yes, they can get rid of that. In fact, that's part of the founding story, of some of these companies.

GLENN: What? What do you mean? What do you mean?

DANIEL: So Shane Legg, who is I guess I'll give you the technical founder of Deep Minds, which is now part of Google Deep Minds. Which is one of the big three companies, building towards super intelligence.

I believe in his Ph.D. thesis, he discusses the possibility of superhuman AI systems, and how if they're not correctly aligned to the right values, if they're not correctly instilled with the appropriate ethics, that they could kill everyone.

And become a -- a superior competitor species to humans.

GLENN: Hmm.

DANIEL: Not just them. Lots of these people at these companies, especially early on. Basically had similar thoughts of, wow. This is going to be the biggest thing ever.

If it goes well, it could be the best thing that ever happens. If it goes poorly, it could literally kill everyone, or do something similarly catastrophic, like a permanent dystopia. People react to that in different ways. So some people voted to stay in academia.

Some people stayed in other jobs that they had, or funded nonprofit to do research about this other thing. Some people, decided, well, this is going to happen, then it's better good people like me and my friends are in charge, when it happens.

And so that's basically the founding story of a lot of these companies. That is sort of part of why Deep Minds was created, and part of why OpenAI was created.

I highly recommend going and reading some of the emails that surfaced in court documents, related to the lawsuits against OpenAI.

Because in some of those emails. You see some of the founders of OpenAI, talking to each other about why they founded OpenAI.

And basically, it was because they didn't trust Deep Mind to handle this responsibly. Anyway how --

GLENN: And did they go on to come up with -- did they go on to say, you know, and that's why we've developed this? And it's going to protect us from it? Or did they just lose their way.

What happens?

DANIEL: Well, it's an interesting sociological question.

My take on it is that institutions tend to be -- tend to conform to their incentives over time.

So it's been a sort of like -- there's been a sort of evaporating growing effect.

Where the people who are most concerned about where all this is headed, tend to not be the one to get promoted.

And end up running the companies.

And they tend to be the ones who, for example, be the ones who quit like me.

GLENN: Let's stop it for a second.

Let's stop it there for a second.

You were a governance researcher on OpenAI on scenario planning.

What does that mean?

DANIEL: I was a researcher on the government's team. Scenario funding is just one of several things that I did.

So basically, I mean, I did a couple of different things at OpenAI. One of the things that I did was try to see what the future will look like. So 2027 is a much bigger, more elaborate, more rigorous version of some smaller projects, that I sort of did when I was at OpenAI.

Like I think back in 2022, I wrote my own -- figuring out what the next couple of years were going to look like. Right? Internal scenario, right?

GLENN: How close are you?

DANIEL: I did some things right. I did some things wrong. The basic trends are (cut out), et cetera.

For how close I was overall, I actually did a similar scenario back in 2021, before I joined OpenAI.

And so you can go read that, and judge what I got right and what I got wrong.

I would say, that is about par for the course for me when I went to do these sorts of things. And I'm hoping that AI 27 will also be, you know, about that level of right and wrong.

GLENN: So you left.

DANIEL: The thing that I wrote in 2021 was what 2026 looks like, in case you want to look it up.

GLENN: Okay. I'll look it up. You walked away from millions of equity in OpenAI. What made you walk away? What were they doing that made you go, hmm, I don't think it's worth the money?

DANIEL: So -- so back to the bigger picture, I think. Remember, the companies are trying to build super intelligence.

It's going to be better than humans, better that night best humans at everything. While also being faster and cheaper. And you can just make many, many copies of them.

The CEO of anthropic. He uses this term. The country of geniuses. To try to visualize what it would look like.

Quantitatively we're talking about millions of copies.

Each one of which is smarter than the smartest geniuses.

While also being more charismatic. Than the most charismatic celebrities and politicians.

Everything, right?

So that's what they're building towards.

And that races a bunch of questions.

Is that a good idea for us to build, for example?

Like, how are we going to do that?
(laughter)
And who gets to control the army of geniuses.

GLENN: Right. Right.

DANIEL: And what orders are going to be give up?

GLENN: Right. Right.

DANIEL: They have some extremely important questions. And there's a huge -- actually, that's not even all the questions. There's a long list of other very important questions too. I was just barely scratching the surface.

And what I was hoping would happen, on OpenAI. And these other companies, is that as the creation of these AI systems get closer and closer, you know, it started out being far in the future. As time goes on, and progress is made. It starts to feel like something that could happen in the next few years. Right?

GLENN: Yes, right.

DANIEL: As we get closer and closer, there needs to be a lot more waking up and paying attention. And asking these hard questions.

And a lot more effort in order to prepare, to deal with these issues. So, for example, OpenAI created the super alignment team, which was a -- a team of technical researchers and engineers, specifically focused on the question of how do we make sure that we can put any values into these -- how do we make sure we can control them at all?

Even when they're smarter than us.

So they started that team.

And they said that they were going to give 20 percent of their compute to -- towards me on this problem, basically.

GLENN: How much -- how much percentage. Go ahead.

DANIEL: Well, I don't know. And I can't say. But as much as 20 percent.

So, yeah. 20 percent was huge at the time.

Because it was way more than the company, than any company was devoting to that technical question at the time. So at the time, it was sort of a leap forward.

It didn't pan out. As far as I know, they're still not anywhere near 20 percent. That's just an example of the sort of thing that made me quit. That we're just not ready. And we're not even taking the steps to get ready.

And so we are -- we're going to do this anyway, even though we don't understand it. Don't know how to control it. And, you know, it will be a disaster. That's basically what got me delayed.

GLENN: So hang on just a second. Give me a minute.

I want to come back and I want to ask you, do you have an opinion on who should run this? Because I don't like OpenAI.

I like X better than anybody, only because Elon Musk has just opened to free speech on everything. But I don't even trust him. I don't trust any of these people, and I certainly don't trust the government.

So who will end up with all of this compute, and do we get the compute?

And enough to be able to stop it, or enough to be able to be dangerous?

I mean, oh. It just makes your head hurt.

We'll go into that when we come back.

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(music)
Daniel Kokotajlo.

He's former OpenAI researcher. AI futures project executive director. And talking about the reckless race, to use his words, to build AGI.

You can find his work at AI-2027.com.

So, Daniel, who is going to end up with control of this thing?

DANIEL: Great question.

Well, probably no one.

And if not no one, probably some CEO or president would be my guess.
GLENN: Oh, that's comforting.

DANIEL: Like in general, if you wanted them to understand, like, you know, my views, the views of my team at the Future Project. And sort of how it all fits together. And why we came to these conclusions. You can go read our website, which has all of this stuff on it.

Which is basically our best guest attempt after predicting their future.

Obviously, you know, the future is very difficult to predict.

We will probably get a bunch of things wrong.

This is our best guess. That's AI-2027.com.

GLENN: Yes.

DANIEL: Yeah. So as you were saying, if one of these companies succeed in getting to this army of geniuses on the data centers. Super intelligence AIs. There's a question of, who controls them?

There's a technical question, of can -- does humanity even have the tools it needs to control super intelligence AIs?

Does anyone control them?

GLENN: I mean, it seems to me --

DANIEL: That's an unsolved question.

GLENN: I think anyone who understands this.

It's like, we get Bill Gates. But it's like a baby gate.

Imagine a baby trying to outsmart the parent.

You won't be able to do it.

You will just step over that gate.

And I don't understand why a super intelligence wouldn't just go, oh, that's cute.

Not doing that. You know what I mean?

DANIEL: Totally. And getting a little bit into the literature here.

So there's a division of strategies into AI's control techniques, and AI's alignment techniques.

So the control techniques are designed to allow you to control the super intelligence AI. Or the AGI, or whatever it is that you are trying to control.

Despite the fact that it might be at odds with you. And it might have different goals than you have.

Different opinions about how the future should be. Right?

So that's it sort of adversarial technique, where you, for example, restrict its access to stuff.

And you monitor it closely.

And you -- you use other copies of the AI, as watchers.

To play them off against each other.

But there's all these sort of control techniques. That are designed to work even if you can't trust the AIs.

And then there's a technique, which are designed to make the case that you don't need the control techniques, because the AIs are virtuous and loyal and obedient. And trustworthy, you know, et cetera.

Right? And so a lot of techniques are trying to sort of continue the specified values, deeply into the AIs, in robust ways, so that you never need the control techniques. Because they were never -- so there's lots of techniques. There's control techniques. Both are important fields of research. Maybe a couple hundred people working on -- on these fields right now.

GLENN: Okay. All right.

Hold on. Because both of them sound like they won't work.

What you WEREN’T TOLD about the National Guard ambush

National Guard members Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe were recently ambushed in Washington, DC, by an Afghan national brought to the US as part of President Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome. What’s the truth about this horrific event? Glenn Beck, who worked with his charity, Mercury One, to properly vet and evacuate many Afghans during the botched withdrawal, explains what almost no one in the government or media will tell you…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So we clearly have a problem with some of the people that have been airlifted into the United States.

And I want to clarify a couple of things.

Because we airlifted people. You did. With your support.

We did it, at Mercury One.

And I want to make sure that you understand what happened there, and where our people, that we airlifted, where they are.

But first, let me say this. What we're seeing experience here is a story that almost no one in Washington wants to say out loud. And it begins with the people. But it -- it begins with the people that are responsible for failure, and that's -- that's our leadership here in America. A failure of honesty, a failure of courage the whole time.

When Kabul fell back in 2021, we rushed in to do what Americans always do, and that's help people out. We run to save. We ran to keep our word, and God bless every soldier and airman and Marine and volunteer who risk everything to rescue the men and women who stood for us, for 20 long years.

But here's the part that nobody prints. We didn't just evacuate our allies. We did. But the United States government evacuated anyone they could grab. In the chaos. Because chaos is the oldest enemy of truth. We opened up floodgates.

Tens of thousands of people, we didn't know. Nobody really vetted. Nobody could verify.

Nobody could fully account for. Even today, we don't know where they are.

That's not xenophobia. That's not fear-mongering. That's the Department of Homeland Security's own inspector saying that. Quote, we don't know who many of these people are. End quote.

This is something that while we're doing it, our vetting is much better than the United States of America.

They're bringing in people they don't know who they are.

Now, think of the weight of the sentence. Came from the inspector general. We don't know who many of these individuals are.

Think about the histories of nations, who forgot the simple duty of understanding who they bring inside the gates.

When that happens, the country is over. Rome did it. The Byzantine empire did it. Europe did it, before the migrant crisis, and now in 2021, we did it as well. And we knew this. We've been talking about it on this program, forever!

Now, inside of our temporary bases, Fort McCoy, Fort Bliss, Quantico, even our own FBI and military police documented things that the media just dusted off.

Eh, don't worry about it. We showed you at the time, sexual assaults that were happening in these temporary bases. Sexual assaults. Domestic abuse. Attempted strangulation. US service women harassed and followed into showers. Did we do anything about it?

These were not rumors. These were not internet stories. They were actual federal charges. Did anybody say anything about them?

Meanwhile, police departments. Virginia, California. Texas. Places with the largest Afghani arrivals began reporting the same exact pattern. Domestic violence, forced marriage concerns. Child protection cases. Cultural classes. And our law enforcement had to deal with them.

And did anybody in the media say anything about it?

No. Why?

You were bigoted if you said anything about it. Here's what happened. Our government took a lot of people from a tribal system.

Patriarchal. War-torn. No skills. No -- imagine going from Afghanistan to Chicago! How do you survive in that? How do you survive in that? Now, that's not the fault of the families. That's the fault of the federal government. A government that through them and us, into a social experiment overnight. Without even thinking about it, talking about it. Accept it.

Some of the people that are paroled into the United States, had ties to the Taliban, ISIS-K, or another, or several other. Terrorist organizations. That's not speculation. That has been confirmed by our own DOD. DHS. And congressional testimony.

We've known this for a very long time.

You know, when the Pentagon warns you, that that person should probably not be in the United States.

I don't know. Maybe we should listen to them. And maybe we should be concerned about a DHS, or a State Department that waves them in anyway. That's not compassion. That's dereliction of duty, period. Period.

Now, add to this, the humanitarian parole system. Meant for rare, urgent cases. It was a revolving door. You -- where are all these refugees from?

I'm not talking about the Afghanis. I'm talking about all the other people that have gone to Europe. That have gone to the United States.

That are swamping countries in the West. Where are they coming from?

Really? There's that big of a -- this is a bigger refugee problem than we've had in World War II. How is that possible. Know

We can't confirm anybody as identity. It doesn't seem that we care. Asylum. Family reunification request. Exploded. Some valid. Some of them unprovable. Some of them just out and out lies, that we knew were lies.

So what happened?

Our cities become strained. Our cities go into disorder. They start stealing from us. Look at Minneapolis.

Here's the biggest strain. The biggest strain on us, is the truth.

Is honesty.

It takes courage to say what actually happened.

But, you know, we're not living in a time of courage. We're living in a time where people saying the truth. You know, you acknowledge reality. And you get labeled.

You notice patterns. Oh, my gosh. You're silenced.

You ask responsible questions, you're accused of bigotry.

Truth doesn't care about the labels. It just sits there.

It just waits for somebody to show up and go, you know. That's the truth. I'm going to have to say it. So let's say it!

Here's the truth: America owes a sacred debt to anybody we promised.

Anybody who was fighting with them, we should protect them. We should honor them. We should welcome them. But that's not what happened. That's not what happened. We didn't perform a moral rescue as a government. We performed a political evacuation.

And I was there, so I know it.

You know, somebody posted kind of a snarky tweet at me, because I spoke at our gala here a couple of weeks ago. And I talked about what the State Department was doing. And I said, you know, it's time to understand how evil the State Department really was during that evacuation. Our people were vetted.

And we didn't bring people into the United States.

We brought people to the UAE. A lot of people went to Australia, a lot of people -- and I said, sat on the tarmac, forever!

Forever!

Because the State Department was shutting town and saying, we can't verify any of these people.

We can verify who these people were.

We knew who these people were.

Most of the people who we brought out, we can show you their baptismal certificate. Because that was part of our vetting. Are you a Christian?

Really? When were you baptized? Who baptized you? What church did you belong to?

Because we knew you were under the gun. Now, if you were like, yeah, I was just baptized three weeks ago. You didn't get on one of our planes, unless the State Department insisted you get on one of our planes. That's what I was saying on this video, that we just reposted. I was saying in the video. Did you know the compromise that they forced to us take.

You want to save these Christians. You have to save these people. You have to put those people on first.

We don't know who those people are. I don't know who those people are.

And those are were the ones that came to America.

We gambled with the future of these Afghani families. Because we just threw them in.

Just throw them in!

They'll be fine!

We threw them into a system not based on reality, of any sort.

We threw them in, without vetting them!

Meanwhile, we would not take the Christians. Hmm. I want you to know, we should not be attacking anybody, except honestly, condemning our government. Because it refuses to tell the truth on what it did and what it failed to do. The mark of a nation that is in decline isn't -- isn't who it lets in.

A mark of the nation in decline is whether it can confess. It can admit to its own mistakes, talk about the truth and the consequences. And today, Congress is whispering. The media is hiding.
Did you read any of the stories?

Hopefully, you didn't. Hopefully you just had a great time on vacation and the holiday.

But I did. My team did. Did you read the stuff from the New York Times?

They still can't admit the truth. They don't even know what the truth is.

I'm still here waiting for the courage of any adult to stand up. A great nation can welcome the stranger. But a dying nation loses the wisdom to ask who this is stranger?

And that -- that -- that gate we passed long ago.

The question is: Do you want to be a dying nation or not? I don't. I don't.

We can't afford to be a dying nation. The world can't afford us to die. So what do we do about it?

Well, the first step is defending your home. And the first step in defending your home is knowing who is inside your home.

And I will show you how we that do quite easily, in a second.

GLENN: Okay.

Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, by the way. The largest single day of global generosity in the entire year. We have a goal of Mercury One for hurricanes and all kinds of other things we do. $300,000 to our maximum impact fund.

We would like this to make the biggest giving Tuesday Mercury One has ever had. The Maximum Impact Fund allows to us move before we have the money. I come on, and I say, hey. There's a tornado or whatever.

We need to raise that money. But by the time we can get that money from you into the bank, it's maybe, two, three, four days later. We would like to be there when it actually happens. This gives us the leeway of being able to move quickly.

So if you can -- if you can give, whether it's a dollar, $5. Whatever you can give. Whatever you can give.

It gives us. At a moment's notice. The ability to move during a crisis. 100 percent of it, if you don't count the credit card fees. 100 percent of it goes down range. So it goes right directly to what it is, you're trying to solve and help people. We don't pull anything off of the top. That's tomorrow and today. You can give at MercuryOne.org. MercuryOne.org. Give your tax deductible Tuesday gift, MercuryOne.org.

Okay. So first thing is first.

You've got to draw a line in the sand. And here's the word that every -- shuts every conversation down.

It's a word wielded like a club.

And it's to not illuminate anything. It's to silence.

And here's the word. Islamophobia. You say anything about the rising violence in Europe. The honor killings.

The grooming gangs. The refugees, who are not refugees at all. But sleeper cells.

Examine suddenly, you're a bigot. This isn't about bigotry. This is the first line you have to cross.

This is about civilization.

So let's draw the line between faith and ideology.

Because on Islam is a religion. Practiced by a billion people. It contains families that I've met, I know. Doctors I trust. Soldiers who fight beside Americans. Millions of peaceful, devout people who just want what you and I want, to raise their children in peace. But Islamism, an Islamist is not a Muslim. This is something entirely different.

Islamism is not a religion. It is a totalitarian system that wraps itself inside of the language. The way Mark wraps tyranny with equality. Okay? Hitler wrapped conquest with national destiny.

Islamism is Communism with a crescent moon. Islamism is fascism in a mosque, and it has absolutely zero intent of co-existing with the West. It comes not to blend in, but to rule. And if you doubt me, ask the women in Iran. If you doubt me, ask the socialists that helped the Islamic revolution in the 1970s. Ask me what happened to them! Because all of them lost their heads. Ask the Christians of Nigeria. Ask the families in Paris and Berlin and London, who are now living under police patrols, because their leaders were too afraid to speak plainly.

You know, we love to open our arms. That's fine. America always does that. But you must. When you open your arms, keep your eyes open as well!

A refugee seeking freedom is a blessing. A refugee seeking a

CARLY: Is a Trojan horse. And we have every moral right.

Every moral duty. To know the difference!

It's not about hating anybody.

I don't hate anybody.

I hate those who want to destroy us.

Want to kill my family.

Want to enslave me under some sort of religion.

Yeah. I do hate those people.

But this is about loving civilization that gave the world dignity of the individual, the rights of women.

Yeah, it was. Not -- not a caliphate.
The protection of minorities. Not a caliphate, us. The freedom to speak and worship. Or not worship. If defending those values makes me or you controversial, then, wow. Controversy is a very small price to pay. Don't you think? Because the alternative is, oh, I don't know. What's happening in Europe.

The alternative is silence! And silence in history is always the first sign of collapse. So the first thing we have to do is choose speech!

Choose truth. Choose civilization.

Black Friday used to be a WARNING...

Before the door-buster deals and stampedes, “Black Friday” meant total financial panic (gold crashing, markets collapsing). Then in the 1950s, Philadelphia cops reused the term because the day-after-Thanksgiving chaos felt like the end of civilization. But the real twist? FDR moved Thanksgiving itself in 1939 just to give retailers an extra week of Christmas shopping — dividing the country until Congress finally caved in 1941. So, what started as a sacred day of survival and gratitude got permanently hijacked by Washington and big business.

The forgotten truth of Thanksgiving that can SAVE divided families

Every year, family members dread getting together for Thanksgiving due to a rise if political division. Glenn Beck strips away the modern trimmings of Thanksgiving — the parade, the football, the turkey — and takes us back to where it all began: a small band of Pilgrims who lost almost everything yet chose to stop and give thanks to God for the fragile miracle of survival. Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday about abundance. It’s a holiday about gratitude in the face of hardship, humility before unearned blessings, and the recognition that true freedom always costs something. Also, StoryCorps Founder & President Dave Isay joins Glenn to share a story of the difference that one small act of kindness can make.

Jimmy Kimmel's wife admitted something AWFUL about Trump voters

As many families across the nation are mentally preparing to deal with their family members who hold different political beliefs than they do, there's ONE family who isn't, because they've kicked them out of their lives: Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney. During a recent podcast appearance, McNearney admitted she lost relationships with some family members after they voted for Trump when she told them not to. Glenn reminisces on a time when family members stayed family, and didn't let political differences get in the way.