Sekulow

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. Logan Sekulow here. Will Haynes in studio. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Leading with some very interesting breaking news as we know there's a lot of conversations around the usages of AI. Of course, all of us have seen it impact how we do our daily work, how we do in deal with our daily lives. Whether you know it or whether you are intentionally doing it, you are typically, and you have been for a while, utilizing different AI systems. Now, obviously, that all changed a couple years ago with really the launch of the big chatbots, the Claudes, ChatGPT, all the ones that really started making it a much more user-friendly experience. So when you think about you as the worker or maybe in your life, when you are looking at the different daily tasks that you roll out with and go, "I could use AI to this," make my grocery list, maybe I could get it to edit a paper for me, maybe I could get it to make sure my grammar is right, draft an email. Well, you got to think in the same way, so are terrorists. And we found out, thankfully, actually I'd say, due to Anthropic's honesty in this in some way, that the Houthi rebels were using Claude, their chatbot system, to create plans to essentially use weapons and to figure out missile guidance and all of these things to see if it worked. Now, thankfully, it didn't necessarily become too successful, and Claude did have some guardrails here. But you got to think if we're using it as a tool, the terrorists are as well. And now you have the anxiety that is coming with the usage of AI when you put it in the wrong hands.
Will Haynes: Well, once again, this is with the backdrop of, one, the Houthi rebels now causing more havoc in the Red Sea, blocking certain pipelines, etc., that have now opened up the front that was just on the other side of Yemen with the Strait of Hormuz with now the Red Sea as well and all the ports there. You're now starting to see that they are in a sense using the tools that are afforded to many of us. They were using the American version of Claude to effectively vibe code their way to a guided missiles program. That's where they're just going in trying to code it by, "Hey, this is what we want it to do," iterating it out the way many people use this for a small business. "Oh, let's make an app that shows our YouTube videos pop up to the front" and not knowing how to be the engineer side of that. You don't need that anymore. Fortunately, Anthropic says that safeguards blocked many of the militants' requests, but not all of them. There's reports that they were running three weapons development programs through Claude, and that is wanting to produce guided rockets as well as ballistic and hypersonic missiles. We know that they also did some test-firing of guided rockets that failed. And after that, they went back to Claude and said, "Hey, can you explain why this failed?" They were iterating the way many of you would your daily work through this type of system.
Logan Sekulow: Yeah, and when you get annoyed with a ChatGPT hallucination, imagine if you're the one trying to shoot rockets. I mean, this is the real world we're living in here, folks. I mean, we have a fun bite if you want to hear about it, coming from some of these top AI leaders. So who's this one from?
Will Haynes: So this is from Jacob Coxon, who had put out a big warning last week using apocalyptic terms about the use of this. Let's hear.
Jacob Coxon: Yeah, so unfortunately, we know how to control nuclear weapons pretty much. We don't yet know how to control AI. This is possibly the most dangerous technology that humanity has ever created. It's basically out of science fiction. I think we have no other choice but to cooperate internationally because an arms race would be disastrous in a way that no other human activity has been in the past.
Logan Sekulow: Of course, this comes on the heels of celebrating the 35th anniversary of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And in other interviews, he directly pointed to what does it look like with the end of humanity with an AI takeover. He pointed to those films. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about this and more. Phone lines are open for you, 1-800-684-3110. We also have some other interesting news in the world of the ACLJ, some of our legal work, and a shocking move where you have a big pro, actually, you know, I'm going to tease it. We're going to see it when we get back. Now we're seeing a conversation break out of people online discussing their usage or lack of usage of AI. What I do want to say is that you are using it regardless if you think you are using it or not. That is, of course, if I'm talking about if you are connected to the internet and you are doing things like Googling at this point. Or you are in what honestly, if you're watching on YouTube, there's a good chance there's something with AI that's working behind the scenes right now as we have this conversation. We know YouTube does this. In fact, they've been very honest with that is they are essentially able to monitor all videos that now come in, including what's being said and what's being seen, due to the AI systems they've built. And that is precisely some of the problems here. I think you have these AI companies raising these red flags at this moment because I believe there's a few different probably motivations. One of which is that yes, it is moving much faster than any one ever anticipated. And number two is they do want to slow it down in some sense. Because think about this. The new iPhone was just announced last week. You know that the team at Apple is working probably multiple generations ahead. They're working on the next iPhone and probably three more after it. Because these things are processes. They got to build them. They got to have a factory to make them. All of these things have to happen. With AI, it's a little different. AI is essentially seemingly self-training itself to get better and better as the days go on. In some ways, that's great. In some ways, that could hurt product releases in the future as well because you're going, "Oh, if we give them everything all at once, eventually are we going to get to the point where our companies become irrelevant very quickly?" And you have another tech boom like you did in the original days of the internet, where you had all these websites come in. Everyone built their own e-commerce sites, everything happened, and then of course, a lot of them were just big startups that exploded. I think there is an issue with that could be a case. And then you have the fact that it is so easy to manipulate not just right now. It's not only that it's easy to manipulate you as a customer. You are able to manipulate it to do things like this. Which is, look, Claude probably has guardrails to probably try to stop and immediately missile defense or missile guidance for terrorist organizations or for anyone for that matter. However, there are pretty easy ways I think people are learning to kind of break that system.
Will Haynes: Well, as Anthropic said in this case, the safeguards blocked many of the militants' requests, but not all of them. And partly, they only found out about it in some of these cases when they came back to it to ask what went wrong. Meaning they had succeeded in getting some of the information to test that failed and then went back to the drawing board, so to speak, to try and iterate out how to fix the problems that went wrong. So we're looking at this in kind of two ways over this weekend of what's coming out. You have the very real current day situation where Houthi rebels that are a proxy of Iran, that have caused a lot of havoc in the region, are using the tools that we all can get and the consumer model that's $19 a month, they're able to use to try and create weapon systems that are far more advanced than a rebel terrorist group has ever been able to have before. And they're not necessarily needing their benefactor in Iran to send them the technology now. They're utilizing it in this way. At the same time, you have this individual Jacob Coxon, who had been a researcher for both OpenAI and Anthropic, so Claude and ChatGPT's companies, parent companies, and had left them, came out with this warning heading into the weekend. A lot of people didn't see it. There was a lot of coverage of the 25th anniversary of September 11th that rightly took over a lot of the news over the weekend. But he put out this message saying that effectively it's an existential threat to humanity. Very bold terms, right? Saying this is a "it could kill us all" were the words he said. Then you had the follow-up over the weekend from the head of Anthropic, Dario, and what he wrote was an essay, 3,800 words, that said, "We must pace the frontier." This dropped late Saturday. And then you had Sam Altman from OpenAI, Elon Musk, as well as Google's DeepMind leader, all agree with him. And what he's basically saying is, "We don't even know if we can police ourselves. We may need the government to step in here." You have this whole discussion then in Congress, which is, is Congress even suited to understand these things to regulate and put guardrails on?
Logan Sekulow: At their age? I'd argue no. So you have this situation and it brings up a very Y2K kind of panic, I feel like, with a lot of people where you've got this drop-dead date where everything's going to shut down, you can't access anything anymore. Now, history tells us a lot of these existential concerning moments when people put out these humanitarian ending type of warnings don't end up coming true or they are able to fix it. But it is concerning when it's the leaders trying to say, "We got to slow ourselves down." Look, we have a pretty positive, one positive thing I can say about AI. One, I think that we have to embrace everything about what's happening with AI. But I do think we're wrong if you just try to shut out all usage. It's just the next industrial revolution. It's the next tech boom. It's the next thing. You may not be able to anticipate it, but it's here and we're dealing with the reality of it. The one thing that I think is a saving grace in this, and we have to remember this, and we have to protect this, because we started losing it with the internet at some point, is that thankfully, you may not like them, you may not agree with them, but the mass majority of these major companies—Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, the ChatGPTs and Claudes and all of these bots you're using—most of them are American companies. That is a very good thing. Because at least you know that you are dealing with an American-based company. When it breaks out of that is when we're going to have more and more concern. When you are dealing with—because my big problem is, if you put too much restriction on the American companies, they're not going to do the same in China. They're not going to do the same in Saudi Arabia. They're not going to do the same in other countries that are even some that are our allies and friends. So to stay ahead of the curve, we got to let our smartest people do this. However, I would guarantee you if this same issue happened in some of these other nations, you'd never hear about it. Thankfully, we do have American leadership in this that understands at least the risk.
Will Haynes: Well, and I think to that point as well, we can play this bite. This is the former researcher who went on with Anderson Cooper. He also went on Fox News as well. He was very concerned about this. But let's go ahead and play bite 11 and then I've got a few follow-ups from even what the President of the United States is thinking. Bite 11.
Anderson Cooper: I assume you are saying literally that you believe that AI could kill us all by the end of the decade. How would that happen? What would that actually look like?
Jacob Coxon: Yeah, so the precise scenario sounds a little bit like science fiction. It sounds like something that's not real, but I think it is frighteningly real. And it's easiest to understand it if you think about real things that happened two months ago. So two months ago, OpenAI agents, AIs hacked into third-party infrastructure entirely of their own accord. And this was a concentrated hacking spree that they carried out of their own volition. And I think that if you extrapolate into the future the level of capabilities of these AIs with the same independent volition, they could cause extreme havoc. For example, hacking critical infrastructure, building extinction-level bioweapons. There's a lot of ways that the AI could actuate itself in the world.
Will Haynes: So I think there's a few things we have to take here. If you are a developer for this, of course you think it is the most powerful thing in the world. So your cautions are going to be extreme as well. I think what we have the liberty here to say is that, one, we also believe God is in control, not technology and science. But it doesn't mean that you don't go in clear-eyed and say maybe there needs to be some restrictions or holding back on this. I want to point back to what you said, Logan, that it is fortunate that many of these are American companies. Because a lot of the most advanced Chinese AI systems are what they call distilled American products. They're using AI to steal the code and the inside and the models and then replicating it themselves and then trying to move from there. So it's not even like they started at the base problem and moved forward. They are saying, though, that the President is actually very apprehensive about putting government regulations in place to pump the brakes, so to speak, on the development of AI because of that very issue. Because of not wanting to fall behind China in that race to be dominant in the tech world because even if it's not doing it by itself, adversaries, as we see, if the Houthis are trying to on a small scale use guided missiles, you can only imagine what Beijing would do economically.
Logan Sekulow: Exactly. And it may not be your enemies in the sense of people that are going to bomb America. It may not even be your enemies. It may be your what you would say competitors in the space or in the world space. So whether that is for control or just to be the great superpower here. So if you want America to stay that way, we have to be very careful when you start putting up these regulations. I want to hear from you. What do you think? 1-800-684-3110. Should we be listening to these AI executives putting in some guardrails here, or does that open the door to China? Does that open the door to other countries to become superior to us in these situations? You think about the space race, you think about all the things over time where America has had to step in and be the leader to keep that title of really the great superpower of the world. What do you think? 1-800-684-3110. Also when we get back, we're going to be discussing some work of the ACLJ and a pretty shocking moment here as a big artist thrown off a tour for speaking what? Against Israel? That actually happened? In this day and age? Let's talk about it when we get back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I do want to talk about the work of the ACLJ, but I quickly want to take a call. Let's go to Bill in Wyoming real quick. Bill, go ahead.
Bill: Thanks for taking my call. Actually, not to be critical, but this is actually an old idea. Two-pronged suggestion: the fact that this idea, I believe, has been in Star Trek: The Next Generation, including the fact of what they called the Borg species. But 50 years ago at my first base station, there was a movie that came out with Eric Braeden as well as it also starred Marion Ross—Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days.
Logan Sekulow: Yes, Mrs. Cunningham. Happy Days.
Bill: And this is about a supercomputer that Dr. Forbin had developed to take care of our defense systems. When they brought it online, it suddenly discovered that there was another computer like it in Russia. They got together and it took over the whole world.
Logan Sekulow: Yeah, I mean, Bill, this is not a nothing-new idea. It's just the reality. And look, science fiction—you bring up Star Trek, Star Trek: Next Generation—you talk about Star Trek the original series. You go back to that, you see how technology was inspired directly by what we had in science fiction 50 years ago.
Guest (Male): Isn't an iPhone a tricorder?
Logan Sekulow: I mean, there are so many of those things. FaceTiming, everything that you thought was just a big concept, a lot of it has become reality. Look at even the space programs that we have today and how much of it was inspired by science fiction. I was at a museum that specifically focused on the art of narrative art and it had a lot of those covers from '60s and '50s pulp fiction, science fiction, trade paperback kind of books. And you saw what a lot of became the future. The problem is, Bill, is here we are. And it's no longer a thing of fiction. And that's great if it's an iPhone. It's a problem if it's missile defense. It's a problem if it's the Borg, as you said. If that becomes a real—and look, as Will said, do I think the people we've heard from today are maybe sounding the alarm to a bit of an aggressive standpoint? Yes. Do I think end of humanity happens in four years? I guess we'll find out. But I would bet against it. Do I think there are nefarious ways to use this technology just like every technology ever in the history of mankind? Certainly. This one just takes things that you needed expertise on and now puts it in your fingertips. And you could say that about, I don't know, if you're a history teacher and you were someone who had to go get your degree and everything and you say, "Well, now every piece of history is in my pocket." Now it's, "Oh, I had to become a scientist, I had to do this if I want to become a missile defense worker." Well, now you just type it in and say, "Hey, I'm trying to build a rocket." Sure, it's not that simple, because then of course you have to go build that rocket. And I think we're forgetting that part, that there is still humans have to have some kind of construction, something like this. Now, could they hack your digital systems? And sure, if all of our phones went down and everything—that's a problem. Okay, you wouldn't be hearing from me right now. It would be Armageddon for sure.
Will Haynes: But let's also calm ourselves a little bit here, but then realize there's real threat here and we have to be smart as the American people. That's right. And I think once again, as you brought up, as the caller brought up, these aren't new ideas that computers could take over the world at some point. And I think that's also part of our humanity of seeing something that is soulless—a computer, you know—and being concerned that it can think on its own, make its own decisions outside of our shared morality. They probably said that about cars. Right, but it was always the radio, the television, any technological advance was the end of the world for those that were legacy products—whether it be horses, whether it be carriages, shipping, logistics, the mail, the Pony Express probably not very happy about the way that then trucks could carry mail.
Logan Sekulow: I still give them a GoFundMe donation every couple weeks.
Will: Well, that's a good organization, really keep the ponies going. But I think at the same point, you're having people like Congressman Chip Roy, who will be leaving Congress after this. He ran unsuccessfully in Texas, I believe, for the attorney general's slot there. But he was saying basically we need to look at this, really. And this is someone who is a lot more libertarian-minded when it comes to his conservative politics, of saying, "Yeah, I think the government needs to get in here and get some regulations." He's saying that those that say that warning that regulating AI would cede ground to China, he says, "At what cost?" He says all the proponents of technology will say, "Oh, your life is better, you can do so many more things, so many more advancements, curing cancer, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Yeah, but what world am I living in?" And I think that's a question we have to ask as we kind of work through all this stuff. I think at the same time, when you're seeing the heads of these companies start to reach out and say we all need to slow down, we all need to maybe look to the government for guidance—when has a tech leader ever said that that didn't have some sort of ulterior motive? And that's being very frank here. They don't want the government prying into their business. They don't want the government slowing them down. Why? Because traditionally, Congress also doesn't really know what they're talking about in this day and age.
Logan Sekulow: If only we had a world government, like a one world government that could then police all of AI. Then we'd be all safe.
Will: Or if you just had an AI that could police all of the AI, everything would be fine.
Logan: Like a world order of some—but it's new, though. It's a new one. Yes, for the 21st century. It'd be good. All right, with that, we do—we didn't get to the main topic today, which we get to we talk about it a little bit easier.
Will: Yeah, I think a little ACLJ work here. Let's pivot a little bit. Stay on hold if you're on hold, though. This is something that I know many of you that watch this broadcast have been interested in and following. We filed our cert petition at the Supreme Court actually on Friday. We didn't talk about it. We did our special broadcast and programming about the 25th anniversary of September 11th. But this is important. This is at the Supreme Court where California is trying to disbar Professor John Eastman for his representation of President Trump. There was no court sanctions on him. There was no other issue that he had other than after his representation—he's a constitutional scholar, he's a professor of law—after presenting novel arguments that they disagreed with, they went straight to disbarment. And now this is something that no court had ever weighed in on. This was all novel. And they went forward and went through a disciplinary proceedings that rose from his legal advice, public advocacy, and court filings during the 2020 presidential election. Then the California Supreme Court, surprise, surprise, upheld this disbarment. And now it goes straight to the US Supreme Court. What we are arguing here is that this is a—disbarring him for exercising his free speech and providing legal counsel to President Trump in the aftermath of an election. It would set a dangerous, dangerous precedent if they were able to start disagreeing with the representation an attorney gives their client and that if you argue what the state doesn't like, they straight disbar you for your advocacy. That would affect attorneys across the country being able to give effective counsel to anyone, including you.
Logan Sekulow: Yeah, exactly. This is a lawyer's job is to represent their client to the best of their ability. And here, this is what is the current situation for John Eastman. So we'll discuss that a bit further coming up. We also have a second half hour of the show. If you don't get us on your local station, find us broadcasting live right now, 12:00 to 1:00 PM Eastern Time, ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook. We are there live and of course archived immediately following however you get your podcasts. Support the work of the ACLJ if you can. That's at ACLJ.org. We'll talk about that a little more when we get back.