The Daily Show host uses unnerving comparison to call out Trump's recent AI remarks
Following President Donald Trump’s public dismissal of the risks surrounding AI, a correspondent for Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show has made a disturbing comparison.
Earlier this week, the US leader suggested that people are overreacting when it comes to the risks of artificial intelligence, claiming that scenarios are being brought up that ‘won’t happen’.
During a recent state visit to Ireland, Trump claimed: “You have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
However, not everyone appears to be as relaxed as Trump about the advancement of the technology, with Josh Johnson, a host for The Daily Show, making an unnerving comparison about the statements.
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On the show, he said: “Did this man just compare AI to the radio? Trump is like if the mayor from Jaws didn’t know what sharks were. ‘No, no, it’s safe to swim everyone.’ This is just like when television came along. It’s just like that. Also, it sounds like Trump thinks radio came after TV. He's been watching TV all these years and then he comes across a radio like, ‘you could have it without the picture? Technology’s crazy!’
“So look, I know a lot of people are worried that AI is going to kill us all before Shrek 5 can give us closure. Mainly because the tech CEOs gave us 6 months to live, but I'm not really sold on their narrative. I think it's just as likely that these people in a speculative overblown industry got into a room and were like, ‘So, is everybody out of money?’ And this whole thing, this whole thing of pumping the brakes is actually about taking the pressure off of them to deliver massive returns that we know still aren’t possible.”
Tech bosses warn that AI industry needs to slow down
The warning that Johnson is referring to there is a recent essay written by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei where he warned that the ‘AI industry should slow down’, adding that AI ‘swarms’ could take over the internet in as soon as six months.
This warning from Amodei was met with support from other figures in the industry, with Elon Musk writing on X, formerly Twitter: “Dario is right.”
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sam Altman added: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”