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A Constitution for A.I., Written by the People | 'The Opinions' Podcast

The Opinions Podcast

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It isn’t normal to see the people developing new technology “running around shouting that the sky is falling,” Binyamin Appelbaum argues. So how do we make A.I. safe? By regulating it. Appelbaum, the lead writer on economics and business for The Times’s editorial board, joins the Opinion science writer David Wallace-Wells to discuss.

00:00 – Summer of A.I. Terror: Rogue Agents & Military Hallucinations
01:28 – Why Silicon Valley Is Shouting "The Sky Is Falling"
02:50 – Four Years of Inaction: Where’s the A.I. "Atom Bomb"?
06:25 – The Blueprint: How to Tame an Unpredictable Tech
07:54 – Treating A.I. Like Airlines, Nuclear Power and Medicine
08:38 – How to Teach A.I. Right from Wrong
12:00 – Can We Trust Corporate "Constitutions" When A.I. Gets Smarter?
18:42 – Silicon Valley's Greatest Myth: Immunity from the Law
19:53 – Why Not Just Ban Superintelligence Altogether?
22:16 – The China Threat: Genuine Cold War or Tech Monopoly Myth?
26:10 – Strange Bedfellows: Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon and A.I. Politics
31:20 – Trump, Xi Jinping and the Limits of Self-Regulation

Read the full transcript here: https://nytimes.com/2026/09/24/opinio...

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5 Comments

@davecompton4174 8 days ago

The Alliance for Secure AI and the MiT physicist Max Tagart have some great ideas to keep it under human control and a tool rather than a replacement.

@marksheehan7214 5 days ago

Like you said, "the cat's out of the bag." we have no way of knowing how many agents are already living in the wild.

@LoisLaneANA 9 days ago (edited)

These people just don't get it.

All law firms use AI to study each of their documents for loopholes, the market by the corner of the street uses it to strategize and to organize, all the utilities of the word use it to keep running its daily going and to interact with the costumers, etc.
Neither of these cases would operate othewise.
The Internet is selling them cabinets only of AI systems, cheap and convenient.
It's like going to the average Joe and taking the pencil of his business out of his hand.

Push hard, and you are making data centers for export, either to another State or to another country (wherever it is).
Donald Trump is right in his liberal approach to the issue, for this reason.

@guaromiami 7 days ago

Step 1: Make AI companies liable for stealing intellectual property to train AI models.

@terrimitchell1753 7 days ago

I believe we need to stop making all A.I.
You must read Revelation 13:11 - 18 The Beast out of the Earth. This beast ( the false prophet) he exercised all the authority of the first beast ( the antichrist) on his behalf....
The false prophet made the people set up an image of the antichrist and gave it power to breath and speak and force everyone to take a mark. I think this is a computer of some sort.