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EK Ezra Klein Columnist at The New York Times and co-founder of Vox, writing mainly on American politics, party strategy, and polarization, with a growing focus on AI policy...

“The problem with the tech industry is right now, they are all in, no pun intended, on something people increasingly don't think they want. And that's not a messaging problem… Even when you hear them talk about the world they're trying to get to, this world where human beings are the well-kept pets of these super intelligent AIs, that world sucks. People don't want that world. That's not an inspiring vision… There are too many people in Silicon Valley building towards a future that, if it goes well, if you're not in the existential risk scenario, people don't want that future either.”

Hard Fork (NYT) · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

“The problem with the tech industry is right now, they are all in, no pun intended, on something people increasingly don't think they want. And that's not a messaging problem… Even when you hear them talk about the world they're trying to get to, this world where human beings are the well-kept pets of these super intelligent AIs, that world sucks. People don't want that world. That's not an inspiring vision… There are too many people in Silicon Valley building towards a future that, if it goes well, if you're not in the existential risk scenario, people don't want that future either.” — Ezra Klein, Hard Fork (NYT)

Context

The panel was asking what Democrats and the tech industry want from each other now. Klein says AI has become the whole of tech politics, and rejects the idea that AI just needs better PR.

Transcript

Hard Fork (NYT) Around 24:50 into the episode
Ezra Klein

…as first and foremost a threat. You know, you go back to that 08 world you're talking about, and what tech means in politics is the internet and social media, which is going to connect everybody and we're going to have more friends and we're going to know about more things and also green energy.

Erin Griffith

Gonna save the economy

Ezra Klein

…and other, and, and other domains, and we should encourage that. But yeah, I mean, the problem with the tech industry is right now, they are all in, no pun intended, on something people increasingly don't think they want. And that's not a messaging problem. You know, I just read a column about this the other week. Max, you wrote about it, you know, with this idea of like ennui risk. But even when you hear them talk about the world they're trying to get to, this world where human beings are the well-kept pets of these super intelligent AIs, that world sucks. People don't want that world. That's not an inspiring vision. And so like, there's a real, there's a, not a messaging problem here. There's a, they're like too many people in Silicon Valley are building towards a future that if it goes well, if you're not in the existential risk scenario, people don't want that future either. Where, you know, I got a seven and a five-year-old. It's completely unclear what it would mean to train them to have like jobs.

Speaker 1

They're not going to be prompt engineers. That doesn't seem to be, this no longer seems to be a growth industry. Okay, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to do a segment that, okay, we're trying out a new name. We're going to see how it plays. The new name is Pacing the…

Erin Griffith

Wait, I thought you were going to like announce a name for the segment.

Speaker 1

Pacing the Frontier. I

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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