To the Barricades!

SPEAKER_01 0:00

May 6, 2026. Federal Courthouse Oakland, California, a Yale-educated venture capitalist named Siobon Zillis takes to the stand and admits under oath that she has four children with a co-founder of one of the world's leading AI Frontier labs. The first two twins, conceived via IVF, were hidden under a confidentiality agreement so airtight that her own father didn't know who'd fathered his grandchildren. While she was pregnant with those twins, she was also sitting on the board of that same lab, reporting back to the father, keeping the info flowing. That lab is OpenAI. The man is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. Two days before he took the witness stand himself, Musk texted the lab's president, Greg Brockman, hoping for a last-minute settlement. When Brockman pushed back, Musk fired off one final line. By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Oh wow, Steven, we've gone in hat. What are we gonna talk about today? Holy moly.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Well, welcome to the AI transition, everyone. Um yes, Lauren.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Set in the mood.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I I didn't think when we started this off that we would be talking about secret IVF NDA agreements of fathering superhuman children around the world. I I I didn't occur to me that's where we would be going with this.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

I mean, all these years ago, all these things that we, you know, people would say in passing, you're like, nah, like there's an Illuminati and they all come, nah, that wouldn't happen. It's just mind-blowing what's going on in the world at the moment.

unknown 1:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I mean, for the record though, how awesome are twins? Of course. Of course. Well, you can be twins.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I know, terrible. For the record, Elon Musk is not my father.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

That you know of.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Wow, I'm pretty sure I'll have a chat to show in it. Um, but pretty sure. Yeah, well, this is mind-blowing. Subterfuge.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

So, what's happened for people who aren't aware of seeing this in the news? There's a big court case that we're going to come to later in this episode with um Elon Musk and Salon Altman, president of OpenAI, going for it toe-to-toe. Uh and some of the revelations are just nonsense. They're mind-blowing. They're just crazy.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Do you think they've drifted a little bit from their original purpose?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Just a tad. Just a little bit. Just a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

It's been a vibe shift, Stephen.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

But look, that's a that's a that's a good segue. Let's talk a little bit just now about how the mood has turned against this whole AI transition. What have you been seeing?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So many things. So we've been kind of tracking some stats and already, you know, in the last 12 months, just in terms of overall excitement, I think the new stats coming in about good old Gen Z, they've gone from an enthusiastic 36%, you know, score that they're excited about what AI can do too at 22 in the last 12 months. So, you know, really dropping. And then you've got their anger rising as well in the same poll from kind of the reverso. Um, the rage is growing from 22 to 31%. So there's definitely just some sentiment not helped by some of these headlines uh with the younger generations about what AI can do for them or how it's getting.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Um saying, you know, half of Americans were worried about AI in their daily life, but the the one that I thought was great. You know, just a small, you know, three quarters, 75%, were worried that AI could pose a threat to humanity itself. So just just small things they're worried about.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

I mean, just little, just little concerns. Wonder where they're coming from, Stephen. Oh my god. Even we talked about this before too, the the unsubscribe kind of movement. We've seen Chat GBT, this one's huge. The uninstalls in the US alone, they surged by nearly 300% in a single day after that infamous Pentacon deal. So, you know, 295% of people just went nah, um, out and uninstalled it.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

But that that sounds like a Trump stat, to be honest. 295% of people. But anyway, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Um and you know, and Claude then went to number one in the app store. Uh the market share of ChatGPT slipping from you know that kind of 90% down to the mid-60s now. Uh there's there's a shift that's going on.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Huge. And some other well, I shouldn't say fun because it's pretty, you know, dark, but one-star app reviews, right? This is for Chat GPT, 775% rise. So, you know, people clued onto the fact that your hard-earned work is paying for this um rise of the machines, and they've just gone, nah, I'm out. We're not gonna help, you know, kill innocent people. Gone really dark.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And and I think it's it it it it's a broad viewpoint as well. There was a there was a a great newsletter um by Jasmine's son who's who publishes on Substack, and she talks about Silicon, a really good one for people who want to dive into that. But she was stating that AI now is an elite political project to be resisted, manufactured by out-of-touch billionaires. That is the real narrative that's beginning to build now.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Uh, and you see these headlines everywhere around what's going on with them, even Bezos and his little recent expedition into the Met Gala world where you know we treat the wife to something fancy, why not pop a good 10 million bucks on the table so we can get to the Met Gala? Meanwhile, your Amazon workers are on food stamps. Just so tone deaf.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

We're talking about a small handful of people as well, right? And but they're so powerful. You know, so for example, Brockman, who's you know, one of the leaders in OpenAI, him and his wife gave$25 million to the one of the MAGA um super PACs. Altman gave another million dollars to Trump his inauguration fund. There's there's serious money that's going in that and Musk has just been throwing money all over the place from a political point of view.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

It is really big. And like we said, we've got I think the the beauty of it all, it's all very dark, is that people occlude onto how you are somehow complicit is a strong word. I think with the when anything new comes to and you're kind of, oh my god, look at this tech, and then you start to realise what it's funding. So this cancelling of these subscriptions is a real delect delet direct political signal that hey, we're on to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah. Well look, let's let's cover some of the quotes that we've managed to pull out from these wonderful Titans because I think some of them are just fantastic. And I want to lead with the first one if you if you if you like.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Oh my god, brace yourselves.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

So Sam Altman was saying that um modern jobs are just a game. Uh, and the direct quote was that a 1970s farmer would look at office work and say, that's not real work. Um and says today's jobs are just a game you're playing to entertain yourself.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Okay, I mean that sounds legit. A 1970s farmer. Because we've got that time machine, let's pop back there. Let's have a little chat. What do you think of today's job? Yeah. We're not out of touch at all.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Oh and look, he also says um earlier in the year as well that he when he was talking about the the the energy that it took in order to train um these AI labs, right? He was saying I know we go with this one. So training takes a takes a human 20 years of life and all of that food and input in order to keep that human alive, right? Plus the evolution of about a hundred billion people who learned not to get eaten by predators. Therefore, AI has probably already caught up on an efficient energy efficiency basis. So we're just useless eaters now, right? Because these these AIs are more efficient.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

My God, this accounting method is amazing. If only we could apply it to the home budget. Uh it's just mind-blowing, isn't it? And this is all because everyone's pointing to how much energy and water it takes to run these data banks and servers. So again, we're just so out of touch. Yeah. Uh what else did he say? He said the the we should, you know, feed the feed the data centers proteins, carbs, and greens as well as millions of tons of fresh water. So lots of that was coming out saying, All right, good on you, Altman. Why don't we, you know, feed the data centers with the human food? It's just crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah. And and so many of these pronouncements, you know, there's a you know, hedge fund manager, Chris Hone, who was saying that the associate classes are a little bit smaller in future years, kind of underplaying it, basically saying the middle class is going to get wiped out with this. And it's like, yeah, but he's a hedge fund manager.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

He's a billionaire.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

It's all right.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, we we know where the best interests of these uh tools is lying now at the moment, which is you know really sad. And interestingly, getting back to some of the cost and and you know what it takes, uh none of these AI companies are still disclosing any of their energy bills, their emissions, or even their water consumption.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah. I and there and there's huge backlash that's now uh brewing, particularly in the US, but we're also seeing it here in Australia as well. Though there was uh reports I was reading last week about the expansion that was happening out in uh West Melbourne, I think in Footsgrade. Um and they're building these huge data centers right in the middle of the city, and they're also bringing in diesel generators in order to power them. Meanwhile, there's meant to be this renewable explosion that's going elsewhere, you have solar panels and the rest of it. But for these data centers, they're bringing in um oil generators, and so there's a lot of pushback within the local area, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of stuff that's going on.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Only what we can find out and see, and let alone obviously, you know, the war in Iran pushing the cost of oil out. That's just, you know, that's a whole nother conversation. Wow. This is a happy place.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

It is, it is, it is. Um, but look, let's let's go to a specific one of a of a case study because there was um there was a really good survey and uh analysis that was done um just in the last month from what's been happening at Oracle. Because remember um last I think it was April last month, they they cut like 30,000 jobs.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, huge. And this is from 162,000 strong workforce. So that's a significant number.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

And a lot of them were there for a long time and they found out um via single cold email. Like this is decades of your life when you get an email saying sorry. Um and famously, you know, locked out of the company's systems before that email arrived. So you're trying to maybe you're trying to get into the office, you know, this is weird, I can't get in, and then you check your email and you know, devastating.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Do you know what through my head there when you're speaking that? They probably went through years, decades of um corporate HR, you know, one team, one purpose, altogether, you know, all those sessions and all those, you know, nicey nicy type stuff and big hugs and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Such a personality type, how are we all gonna work together? Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yep, all of that. Um, but then at the end of the day, nah. Yep. Email. Yeah. Not not even a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah. And there was a uh workers advocacy group worth checking out called What We Will. Uh they surveyed 270 of these ex-employees and um the results were shared with time. Again, some really sad stats, like 62% of them were over 40. Um, 22 had been at the company for over 15 years. And a lot of them, this is where it gets really interesting, 27 odd percent had they were being um remunerated with some restricted stock units. So these were scheduled to kind of vest within about 90 days of being let go. So all the promised money you're gonna earn from sticking around.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yes. So keeping people there for for years, for decades longer than they normally would. But that but those vested stocks, which were going to mature, you know, in the next couple of months, and then you'd they'd probably be able to go into you know early retirement and or you know, pay off their house or something like that. They dedicated their whole life there. Um but deliberately, deliberately, it looks like Oracle went through to find those people and target those ones for replacement first so they didn't have to pay out. And it was something in the region of eight to ten billion dollars probably Oracle saved with uh with with with doing this retrenchment, which they which they then threw straight away into buying AI chips because that's what they're doing just now. They're making that big shift.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Wow, and you know, it's coming right from the top there. And you imagine that devastation you've been hanging out. I think they had one example, Jill, she lost 300 grand just overnight. They were cancelled the moment you were terminated. So, you know, as you said, the theory was they targeted these older employees because they had the most stock to claw back.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yes. And there's been a number of those people after they've been interviewed saying that that's them they're they're done working in IT ever again. Those ones, Cynthia Sloan, who'd been there for 19 years as a she was a director of technical writing, uh, and she she said that's it. She's she she just can't do um IT anymore. And she said she's don't want to be treated as a line on a spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

It's crazy. And you know, the sad other s oh my goddess, there's more sadness white, it gets worse. Uh a lot of these people actually spent a lot of time training AI to take over their jobs. So they were relying on AI to keep them working efficiently because they were getting overloaded. There's so much going on, unwittingly actually training them how to do their job and helping themselves to be replaced.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

You're analyzing workflows, you're training the LMMs, uh, and then you know, by the end of that, it's well, do we really need all these people now? Because now that these have all been trained, you know, can we kind of make the team a bit more efficient, a bit more lean? It's f for these workers in particular, and I actually know a couple over in the States as well. I really feel for for the people in this position, it's really, really hard.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

It's awful. And again, it's it's not to kind of scare people, it's just to make you aware and you know, to keep across what's the culture of your organization, what can you see coming? Trying to, you know, be aware that unfortunately and look perhaps lucky for us who are in Australia, a lot of these cases are actually in the States, although we do see some of these patterns starting to emerge.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Um but yeah, devastating Oracle.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

And uh and and so the the people at the top of these trees, okay, maybe not an Oracle, although Ellison we could do a whole um episode just on him as well. But last week, as we alluded to at the beginning of the episodes, um you know Elon Musk and Sam Altman are now on the stand in Oakland trading verbal barbs at each other, um having this trial about open AI, Musk Musk is suing open AI. For me, the juxtaposition between those two stories where you've got you know these mass layoffs, um you know, real desperate things that are happening to families, and meanwhile, what are the people at the top of the tree who are you know making all these extra billions? What are they doing? They're going toe to toe with tech bro confrontations.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

It's like uh really, really schoolyard.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

We've got uh Musk suing open AI um basically saying that um uh they lied to him when they said they weren't going to become a for-profit company, so then he had because uh they were meant to be set up more as a non-profit and as a charity, um, and uh that's not what he wanted. Although interestingly he left OpenAI, said he didn't want anything to do with it, and then set up a for-profit, you know, AI company in direct competition, getting trained by OpenAI.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

He revealed that he was using their own tools, yeah, for his company.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

It's yeah, and it looks like it actually's just uh it's just games. You know, you so Sam Altman was talking about you know um people's jobs are a game. You know, no, but this is a game between these these schoolyard boys, right? Because this is a game for a must to just try and uh uh undermine the IPO that's um the OpenAI are trying to do later in the year, right? Um that that's what he's at. It's oh totally.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Just wants to blur that up. They've made it what nearly a trillion dollars now, though interesting with all these, you know, recent maybe not. Are they really? Maybe not. We've yet to see that really come to fruition. So that's again that schoolyard game where I'm gonna blow up your IPO and yeah, uh trading these pictures at each other.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

And and that's where you know the thing that we opened with. That's where these stories were coming out now of you know these senior executives. And that was like a woman who was on the board of OpenAI that that Musk's having your um IVF baby under NDAs with who she's feeding back information to. It the whole thing is just crazy.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

I never thought we were talking about that on an AI podcast.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Uh people listen to this. We'll we're not making this up. Go go and have a look at the transcripts. We'll put some links in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Jummeline, yeah, we'll put some uh links in the show notes. You can go and dig it out. It it's there's so much out there, it's just truly boggling. And like you said, um uh what did my lawyers say? This is oh, let's get this nice little uh use of language, perfidy and deceit of Shakespearean proportions, i.e. a long con. So this is where Musk had donated$38 million for a non-profit, and you've seen it grow to this size. So apparently there's audible gasps in the court, Stephen.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Joe, it is Shakespearean stuff, right? But medieval in the court. That's a play, right? And it's medieval and oh dearie me, dearie me. Um but so at least outside the courthouse, you know, kind of tying this back into this backlogglass, you know, lots of protesters with signs saying, you know, quit ChatGBT and boycott Tesla. And um I I I I just you have we look back in our life, you know, of the protests that we've seen during Thatcherism and the minor strike, and you know, and then you know the Iraq war and all that sort of stuff. Um and now we're on the streets against these tech bros holding up signs about boycotting Tesla. I I I didn't see the the arc of my life going in this way, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

No, and you know, we were talking of all things about the Met Gala before, and there was an activist group. Um everyone hates Elon. They it was pretty heartbreaking when you read the background of this. I don't know if anyone saw this, but they projected the testimony of Mary Hill. Now, she's a 72-year-old Amazon warehouse worker, right? Oh, she's battling cancer, and on that night they projected onto his very expensive penthouse. This is Bezos penthouse, um, talking about how she had to keep, you know, packing boxes while she had a chemo pump in her liver because Amazon will not pay her if she doesn't show up. It's mind-blowing. And she some of the employees are living on food stamps. Well, here's this$120 million penthouse, and we'll pop off with the wife who, by the way, is called Lauren. It's a bit of a letdown for Lauren's out there. I know. Sorry, Lauren. It wasn't me, it's a Debbie Lauren. But that's just that, you know, that complete detachment from reality that we've got a 72-year-old woman in a health crisis having to go to work to survive with a a chemo pump, meanwhile, you know, we're at the we're buying off the herbal things, the Met Gala. So lots of protesters getting out there, human, human power connecting, trying to make change.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Well, look let me throw in a little bit of history. So some history that that really you know has always fascinated me, to be honest. And it's you know, it's a word that people have probably heard lots, you know, being called a Luddite. But the Luddites were an actual group in the 19th century um in England, and they were skilled artisans, right? So they were the weavers. They were the computer programmers of their day. Computer programmer and artisan? Maybe not, maybe that's a member of which you know what I mean, right? So they uh they saw what was coming, they saw the machines that were coming, they they realized that economically it was going to destroy their living, right? Um and it was going to force them out of their homes, it was going to force them into the factories. Um and it did, and it did. And they and they tried to fight back. And they uh they they didn't hate the machines, um, but they hated that capitalist exploitation, the wage cuts, the the loss of autonomy, right? Um and and by smashing those frames, it was meant to be leverage against those bosses, not against progress itself. That progress needed to be shared better.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah, and such a powerful vi you know visual, isn't it, of these, you know, people smashing these waving machines. And like you said, when I think of a ladder, you kind of think them as of them as an ignorant technophobe, but actually highly skilled people who kind of see what's coming and trying to fight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

I and you know what? They basically predicted the next hundred years. You know, all those Dickens movies, you know, and and books that you'll you'll read and watched, you know, with that that terrible poverty and then the work poor and the rest of it and hugely unequal societies, the Luddites were right. For a hundred years, for the vast majority of people, it was pretty awful, right? Um it wasn't really until the last since the Second World War, to be honest, when things started uh to to improve a lot. But it's interesting how you know the victors always you know paint the picture. And you're right, that word Luddite, you know, my whole life has been you know taken as a pejorative. It's you know that ignorance, um, that ignorant person who doesn't understand progress.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

And this is where we're we're seeing this you know human work alliance is forming where you've got like 70 odd at at the moment, obviously, this is come back to the future. We're not back in the 70s and the back in the dark ages here. But you know, rolling forward, we've now got 70 plus international labor unions and 140 million, you know, workers, the new dare I say Luddites, forming this human work alliance to really, you know, fight back. And they're lobbying um uh for an act called the this is a pretty cool name to act, Algorithmic Accountability Act.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

I love that name. Yes, that's pretty cool. Triple A.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, you know, and really pushing that productivity tax on companies that are replacing workers with AI.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Um I and and I love the stats that we found about Gen Z. Gen Z Gen Z. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Oh my god, this one's a ripper. You take it, Stephen. This is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

So you've got sabotaging from the inside, you've got 29% supposedly of all workers are intentionally sabotaging AI initiatives, right? So that's like nearly one or two.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Gen Z cheeky.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Right, right, but close to to the Z ones, it's nearly 50%. So 44% of Gen Zen workers do the same. Um, so that's kind of like deliberately you know, spiking the training models, using unapproved tools, you know, dumping things at the chatbots. I mean it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Using IO swap against itself and fading the machines. Um absolute rot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

I mean it's not exactly smashing the you know the the looms and the frames of the Linux. doing but but but what can you do to fight against this?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah it's fascinating when you you can see that the um we can see what's come before and where we're going. So like no we're not gonna we're gonna find different ways of you know um fighting these and unfortunately that leads us to a segue where some of this like it's kind of a bit fun when you hear about a bit of subterfuge from Gen Z, you know putting a bit of AI slot. But it has actually turned quite violent as well. This was some, you know, nasty headlines recently around um the data center wars, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:31

We were talking a little bit about the cost of that infrastructure but we've also seen you know incidents of you know Sam Altman being attacked right there was a Moldov cocktail thrown at his gate in San Francisco, a 20-year-old yeah I and and when when the guy who was arrested I think it was Daniel Moreno Gamma when he was arrested uh he had a manifesto with a kill list on it which was names and addresses of AI executives and board members. Right? So there's that personal attack so there's also the attacks on the data centers themselves you know so there's been uh there's both been you know civil disobedience and you know lots of them cancelled but you know but there but there have been shots fired as well. There was in Indianapolis in April there was uh 13 shots fired into the home of a Democratic councillorman his eight year old son was inside uh and the person who shot who shot it left a note the doorstep saying no data centres. Yeah and again no lucky no one was hurt but this is how desperate people are feeling you know yeah um the I just feel like my whole well as we were saying you know that the arc of your life and you know and what happened before well you know that that earlier periods um I was talking about when I was younger um I was really into the the Dune books you know the Frank Herbert you know the the movies and the books Zendayah look at May and mine what oh you mean Zendiah and and Steve Shaw what actually Zendayah just to set aside is amazing in the drama the new film that's out by the way it's great going to be a bit more good yep um but this Morena Gamma um he called himself the Butlerian jihadist right now that is because the Butlerian jihad was the holy war against the thinking machines that was in the June book so the reason why you don't see computers and stuff in the um in the movies is because you know you know hundreds of years previously there was a there was a war against the machines and it was the Butlerian jihadist and so people are now taking that sci-fi calling themselves that you know posting it on Instagram and then going on and trying to shoot people and throw Molokov cocktails.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

So science fiction becoming reality becoming it really is and it's again we've we've seen it all in the past it's being pulled through the same fights today just over and over at the same you know pattern fighting against that anti-machine theology.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Stephen so many stats so many so so many stats and we wanted to do this episode where showing that there's a there's still a lot out there and we will be definitely covering a lot of this more you know in the in the weeks to come of the amazing things that are happening. Because there are amazing things but there is a there is a real backlash that's brewing as well and we thought it was worthwhile to kind of really frame that and show the breadth of it there too because you know what's happening is monumental and the backlash that's coming towards it is big as well. Unfortunately for me what what in my head when you were talking about the Luddites and that comparison at the end you know the British state just sent in the troops and hanged the leaders and and that was it. And they were right but they lost so we'll see what happens this time.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

So yeah it look it is good to see there's so many well not good to see so many scary headlines out there but humans are you know getting wise to what's going on and actually trying to make a bit of a stand. So like you said there's there's some positive things going out there but overwhelmingly at the moment there's a lot of backlash so wanted to dig into that.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Do you have a way to cleanse the palate just a little bit from this episode Lauren do you do do you have a joke that you can just I try my best to find a decent dad joke.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

It was a tough one just thematically and I've been for a bit of a classic um Elon Musk joke here you ready Steven Yeah okay go for it.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

What does a new Tesla smell like I don't know what does a new Tesla smell like Elon's mask truly terrible truly terrible but that's what dad jokes are meant to be exactly I got a groan I'll take it as a win excellent all right thank you Lauren um look if this has got you thinking please share it with someone wrestling with these questions subscribe comment wherever you're listening it really helps and we'll see you next time and remember you still matter at least for just now thank you Lauren thank you Steven