This story originally appeared in La Fronde’s Sept. 29 newsletter.
Calls for a slowdown in AI development from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon and tech CEOs, plus warnings of possible mass extinction, left everyone with a ton of whiplash but not a lot of real answers on what comes next. If anything, the whole conversation has gotten even more unsettling as reports start to come out, like the news today of OpenAI allegedly ignoring employees’ safety concerns — on the same day many of those CEOs sat down with President Trump at the White House and signed what he called a "morally binding" AI agreement that’s really just a fancy pinky promise.
CBS News’ Jo Ling Kent, the network’s senior business and tech correspondent, has had a front-row seat to the scramble over what comes next for AI. She was able to land a sit-down interview with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just hours after he published his essay calling for government regulation of AI safety, and has since spoken with other leaders like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the Trump administration’s former AI czar David Sacks to get to the bottom of things.
She’s one of the few people who has a window into what these tech leaders are thinking and feeling at the moment. I caught up with her about the recent interviews she’s done, what wasn’t said on-air that stuck with her, and some of the women AI leaders you should have on your radar.
You’ve had several big interviews with people like Dario [Amodei] and Jacob Coxon, the former Anthropic employee who raised the alarm about AI safety. What has the whole process been like of coming to terms with what's happening around AI safety right now? What are you seeing behind the scenes from your interviews so far?
The people that I'm interviewing — whether it's Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Dario Amodei of Anthropic or Jacob Coxon, who sort of kicked off this latest cascade of concerns — the common theme here is that everyone is trying to figure it out in real time. And I think that is where real-time reporting — interviews with the principals and everyone around the issue — is so important. Whether you're the CEO of one of these really valuable companies or you're someone who's quit because you're worried about safety, the concern is actually pretty universal. It's a question of how executives and people in power want to handle it.
One part of the interview with Dario Amodei that I really appreciated was when you were questioning him on the severity of the whole AI safety issue — on a scale of one to five. You pushed on his answer when he said, "It doesn't mean that we need to panic today. It doesn't mean that we need to shut it all down." Do you think he was being sincere in his response?
I've sat down with Dario Amodei in two really consequential moments for Anthropic. The first time we did an interview was in the hours after the Trump administration and the Department of War designated Anthropic a supply chain risk, which had never been done to an American company in the history of the United States. And the second time we sat down was in this moment where Jacob Coxon is warning of, potentially, the end of humanity, and all of the safety concerns that he had working at Anthropic and OpenAI.
In that answer that you're asking about, the feeling I got from Dario is that he really wants to figure out what to do. I don't know that he necessarily has all of the answers, but in trying to get to some sort of regulatory resolution, his hope is to take down the temperature. I also found that to be the case with Jensen Huang at Nvidia when I talked to him. They want to reach solutions, but they fundamentally disagree on what the regulatory environment should look like. And in a sense, if you're watching it as a regular person who uses a chatbot — if you use ChatGPT or use Claude — I don't know if those are satisfactory answers. But that's why we're asking the questions: We really want to know how they view it. I think Dario wanted to take down the temperature, but I think he also wrote in his blog post that there could be all of this serious economic damage, safety concerns. That's why I follow up. That's why I ask the questions. That's why I keep going — to try and get a clearer answer out of these guys.
And that interview happened super quick, too. Right after he published the essay, you were one of the first people to speak with him. What was that whole process like of distilling what he said in the essay, getting your questions in order?
It's a team effort. Nothing happens in my world, in the world of CBS News, without a really strong team. So I was prepping questions with Emily Pandise, my longtime producer, Dustin Stephens at 'Sunday Morning,' John Goodwin at 'Sunday Morning.' Other people were weighing in throughout the organization because I wanted them to figure out: What does this essay say? What were our questions going into this essay and coming out of it? And how do we best deliver something that gives people clarity? Because ultimately, I am trying to serve the public and serve our viewers and help them make sense of this wild moment. And I think it's our job to deliver not just the facts but the context. So how do you ask questions that get to that and, hopefully, elicit an answer that actually is an answer?
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I think you do a great job asking the tough follow-ups. I've noticed this in a few interviews that you've done, with David Sacks also, when he was talking about Trump's reaction to this whole thing. How do you prepare for those follow-up questions?
I think it's just years of experience that adds up, in addition to preparing for that particular interview. There's no secret sauce to a good follow-up other than listening. And I also am like everyone else out there: If I'm going to talk to you, whether it's under the lights and cameras or just you and me casually at a coffee shop, I'd like to know the answer. So if you're not going to answer in the first go, well, then there's going to be a follow-up. I see it as always being a real-time listener. I've learned about this over the years. When I was a Fox Business reporter covering the Alibaba IPO, interviewing Jack Ma live on the air — the key to the conversation is listening. Because if you don't listen, they might say something, and then you miss a cool opportunity to learn something or get an answer. So I think it's just listening and being ready and feeling prepared and having your team behind you.
From your time speaking with Jensen, David Sacks and Dario: Based on all these interviews, what are some of the things that they didn't say that — concern might be too strong of a word — but that you walked away wondering a bit about, or had questions about?
I think there's a lot of questions around what happens to Anthropic, the company, next, because they are reportedly expected to go public before the end of the year. How does this safety debate change things? When I asked Dario Amodei, "How is your business model going to change? Are you going to stop releasing new models?" it was an emphatic no — we're going to keep doing business. So that's one thing I'm very curious to learn more about, because how Anthropic performs impacts the market writ large. And you have Sam Altman saying they're delaying and they expect to go public in the new year. In addition to these people impacting policy and the way we work and the way we live, they also have this pretty big market influence and financial impact that will trickle down to a lot of people. So that's one thing I'm super curious about.
Did you get a sense from the interviews that these tech leaders were taking that seriously?
Oh, this is the reason I want to get them all together and sit down with them together. Because between Dario, Sam, Elon Musk, Demis [Hassabis] at Google DeepMind, Mark Zuckerberg — these are the people who have to make this happen, in a sense. Because right now, per the track record that Congress has had on social media and other tech issues, there isn't a good track record of either oversight or regulation of these tech companies. And you have an administration, a White House, right now that prefers to have a laissez-faire, light touch on industries like crypto, for example. So from my reporting so far, it seems like the only thing that will actually result in anything is if these CEOs and these founders get together and really hash it out. When I asked Dario Amodei, "Is there a group chat? What's going on here?" he held back a little bit, but he says he's really encouraged by the cooperation. But I don't know what that actually means in practice, and that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of right now.
Because it's probably a little hard to tell sincerity, right? You're talking to these people one-on-one, but would they respond differently if they were in a group? You wonder.
Yeah, and also, their feet are held to the fire, and the question is who can actually hold them accountable. It's not just journalists asking questions. Is this a shift in public opinion? Is this a shift in how these companies may or may not go public? What is it? So that's where I'm really trying to pursue more reporting on what has to happen next, who will actually do it, what are the roles of these tech companies, these AI companies, in all of this.
Who are the women that maybe are not being talked about enough in this space, from your reporting, that you find interesting or intriguing?
Oh gosh, there's so many. I did an interview with Fei-Fei Li, who's seen as the godmother of AI. She's at Stanford, and we profiled her and talked with her about the early foundations of AI and what's coming next. I'd really like to interview Mira Murati, [CEO of Thinking Machines Lab]. She left OpenAI and now has started her own company. But there are so many women in AI that are making a huge impact that I'd love to talk with. Because we have to remember that I may sit down with the CEO, but the CEO is running a company that is a large team of people, especially when you're talking about the big companies. So you have different C-suite executives who are women, and all of these leaders matter in this conversation. They really do. And I'd love to sit down with more of them. I'm very interested.
Fei-Fei Li has a phenomenal book you should read, and the story we did with her was just so fascinating — to go into her lab at Stanford and learn not just about her impact and how she's built the foundations of AI, but also how she's thinking about the future, because she's often been very correct about what's coming.
I’ll need to read! What’s the book called?
The book is called 'The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI.' I highly recommend it!
It’s rare to see these tech CEOs agree to do interviews where they know they’ll be asked hard questions. That’s what I found so striking about your sit-down with Dario. There’s a lot of discussion around how “access” journalism has changed, because people with access have greater control of the narrative now. How do you strike that balance between maintaining a rapport with people but at the same time not losing sight of being able to ask tough questions?
I reach out for interviews all the time. I reach out for information all the time, and I don't just go to the comms teams of these executives. I'm a reporter through and through. I'm well-sourced throughout these companies, these industries. So I would say, when I ask for an interview, I just ask. And when we sit down and we're rolling, I ask all of the questions that I can in whatever time we have together. I don't think about anything else other than: What answers do we need to get from these people to better understand what is going on — in this case, in the AI moment that we're in? I can't say that I think about "access." I just don't. Because I think our job as journalists — my job as the senior business and tech correspondent at CBS News — is to hold people accountable for their choices, for their actions, for what they do. I'm not familiar with how other beats work, like entertainment, for example, or fashion. But I am pretty sure that when we sit down with these CEOs, they're fully expecting a bunch of tough questions from me. And that's our job: making sure the public has as full of an understanding as possible. The tough questions are the basics.
But it's a lot of preparation. It is a lot of — sometimes getting rejected for 10 years. When I talked to Tim Cook, he was in his final weeks as CEO [at Apple]. I had covered the company for a decade, and I had never gotten a yes until [then]. So I think if you're thinking about going into journalism and you want to do these types of interviews, you have to put in the time. You have to be very used to rejection and get comfortable with it. It's not a referendum on your team, your place, yourself. Just keep going, because at some point you might get a yes from someone, and then you can go in and do the interview that needs to be done.
I started covering Apple at Fox Business as a correspondent there. These CEOs can talk to whomever they want. They can go to a podcaster. They can talk to me. They can talk to anybody. But I hope my record of reporting speaks for itself, because that, to me, is really it.