The race no one can win: AI’s anti-human crisis, with Aza Raskin

Hey, folks. Jeff Berman here. Exciting news. Applications are now open for the Masters of Scale Summit. It's happening October 20 through October 22 in San Francisco, and it is a really special event. Please join our curated community of founders, innovators, and leaders shaping the future. Expect ideas that challenge your assumptions and connections that move your business and maybe even your life forward. It's an experience that can change literally everything. Apply now at mastersofscale.com/apply20six. That's mastersofscale.com/apply20six. Founders ship faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone, anywhere, and get visas handled fast so you stay focused on scaling. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 40,000 fast growing companies trust Deal to move fast. Visit deal.com/mos. That's deel.com/mos. As soon as you can automate coding, you're heading towards the recursive self improvement loop. Nukes don't make better nukes, but AI does make better AI. And whoever gets there first theoretically gets a runaway lead where their AI gets smarter and you get this explosion of intelligence. You can now outpack all of your enemies, potentially shut their AIs down. It means you can, like, have technological and weapons development dominance, and that thing could happen very quickly. So that's the race. That's Asa Raskin, cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology. You may know Asa as cohost of podcast, Your Undivided Attention or from the documentaries, The Social Dilemma and the AI Doc. Alongside cofounder Tristan Harris, Asa has become a leading voice on the dangers of AI acceleration. And let's just say that we've never run a more important episode than today's. We talk about incentives that are pushing tech into uncomfortable places, who Asa believes the good guys and bad guys really are in Silicon Valley, and why it's not too late to build a collective future that prioritizes human beings. Our conversation ranges from Pope Leo in The Vatican to tech priorities in China, and the stakes are both terrifying and empowering. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Asa Raskin, cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology. Asa, thanks for joining us. Hey, Bob. It's such a pleasure to be here. I have to start with the pope. Pope Leo recently released an AI pronouncement called Magnifica Humanitas, a title that sort of has echoes of humane technology. Did you talk with the Vatican at all about this encyclical? We've been working behind the scenes, certainly, like, talking with the Vatican. The week that, that the encyclical came out, Tristan Harris, my cofounder, was actually at the Vatican. And every time we've interacted with the Vatican, what we've discovered is even though we come from, obviously, very different backgrounds, there's something sort of the same that's preserved around how we both view there's something sacred about life and something sacred about …