Pod Insights TED Radio Hour Who is really shaping the future of AI? About this episode What will AI look like in 2026? Is the hype a bubble or a tech revolution that will transform everything? This episode, the global politics shaping the future of AI and what it means for you. Guests include tech entrepreneur Alvin Wang Graylin, NPR tech reporter John Ruwitch, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in conversation with TED's Chris Anderson.
TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted http://plus.npr.org/ted
See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Manoush Zomorodi? This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message: What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current, so you can win more deals. Learn more at hubspot.com. Hey, it's Manoush Zomorodi here, host of NPR'S TED Radio Hour. Can you believe that 2025 is almost over? There were times when it felt like this year would never end, right? 2025 was a seriously tough year for NPR and local stations. Despite the loss of federal funding for public media, despite attacks on the free press, we're still here. NPR won't shy away from exercising its critical right
0:45 Manoush Zomorodi? to editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment. And with your support, NPR will keep bringing you the news without fear or favor. Here at TED Radio Hour, that includes bringing you science, technology, human behavior, neuroscience, and nature, topics that help you navigate and find meaning in a world that is changing so fast. If you are already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. We are so grateful. If not, please join the community of public radio supporters right now, before the end of the year, at plus.npr.org. Signing up means you are directly supporting public media, and you also get a bunch of perks, like bonus episodes
1:29 Manoush Zomorodi? from some of NPR'S podcasts. End your year on a high note. Invest in a public service that matters to you. Please visit plus.npr.org today, and thank you.
1:44 Manoush Zomorodi? This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
2:04 Speaker 01 You just don't know what you're gonna find.
2:05 Manoush Zomorodi? Challenge you.
2:06 Speaker 01 We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?
2:09 Manoush Zomorodi? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR.
2:22 Manoush Zomorodi? I'm Manoush Zomorodi. In 2025, it felt like so many conversations at work, at home, online, eventually turned to talking about AI. I know.
2:35 Speaker 02 Chat GPT is transforming the way we live and we work. There's a growing debate about whether AI should have a place in the classroom. AI is the key to reshaping American politics.
2:46 Manoush Zomorodi? And the questions that we all still have, is this a bubble inflated by hype and speculative investments? OpenAI has a valuation of $500 billion.
2:57 Speaker 02 Nvidia shares hitting another record high.
3:00 Manoush Zomorodi? Or are we living through the opening seconds of a true transformation of our society? Are we heading towards AI with human-level intelligence that could change how we work, live, and learn?
3:14 Speaker 03 I think there's a little bit of truth to both.
3:17 Manoush Zomorodi? This is Alvin Wang Graylin.
3:19 Speaker 03 I've been studying and building solutions in AI and immersive tech, cybersecurity, semiconductors for 35 years.
3:28 Manoush Zomorodi? Alvin is a scholar, entrepreneur, and engineer. His book, Our Next Reality, examines the good and bad potential outcomes of what he says will eventually be a technological revolution.
3:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, I mean, we're definitely at a very important fork in the road. You know, the last 10 years has made AI an amazing technology, and it's about to really mature and get to the next phase.
3:55 Manoush Zomorodi? And like many experts right now, Alvin says we can't talk about where AI is going without talking about the two big players in the field, the US and China, and how their goals and values differ. Because in the short term, we may not see politics affect our tech.
4:15 Speaker 03 In the sense of the technology is going to take a few years for it to really mature and to then filter into our lives and economy.
4:24 Manoush Zomorodi? But over the next few years, global affairs will be crucial to getting the world we want with AI.
4:31 Speaker 03 Because the direction that we take it and the policies we put behind it is going to affect the trajectory of our civilization for the next decades, if not centuries.
4:45 Manoush Zomorodi? So today on the show, making sense of this moment in tech, the various directions that AI might go, how visions of artificial general intelligence, AI that's as smart as us, are shaping political strategies, and whether the AI arms race between China and the US is about global dominance, or more just a narrative being pushed by American tech entrepreneurs. We'll hear from a reporter who's covered the tech worlds of both Beijing and Silicon Valley, and from OpenAI's Sam Altman in conversation with TED's Chris Anderson. But first, we return to Alvin Wang Graylin, who has an unusual perspective on AI.
5:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, my background, having worked in China, in the US, in Taiwan, really gives a perspective that might be a little bit different than what you normally hear.
5:38 Manoush Zomorodi? That perspective has roots in his family history. Alvin was born in China during the Cultural Revolution, but his grandmother was American, a journalist.
5:48 Speaker 03 My grandmother was a reporter for the New York Tribune back during the Sino-Japanese War. And she went to China in 1937 to report on what was happening and had to escape China in 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. And she left my mom in China. And that's kind of how I came to be.
6:11 Manoush Zomorodi? When Alvin was nine, the family moved to the US. They became naturalized a few years later.
6:17 Speaker 03 So we are definitely proud Americans. And in fact, my brother was the first Chinese-American to work on a US nuclear submarine.
6:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Meanwhile, Alvin went on to MIT. He got one master's degree in computer science, another in business, and ended up being a pioneer in developing the tech needed for AI today.
6:41 Speaker 03 I helped IBM and Intel develop their early chips back in the late 80s and early 90s. And in fact, I worked on a project for Intel back in 1993. And it was what became the technology that all GPUs are based on today.
7:00 Manoush Zomorodi? The next year, he helped Intel open its first office in China.
7:05 Speaker 03 And, you know, at that point, there was really no consumer PC market. And I essentially told my, the GM of China, I said, hey, I think we should try to build this market. And here's a 20-page plan of how we can do it. And he said, OK, well, go make that happen. And I was.
7:24 Manoush Zomorodi? Bring PCs to China.
7:26 Speaker 03 Yeah. And at that time, you know, PCs were $2,000 or $3,000. And the average income in China was around $200 or $300 per year. So for that market to exist, we had to make a lot of changes.
7:38 Manoush Zomorodi? Since then, Alvin has gone back and forth, working between Silicon Valley and China. But mostly today, he wants to talk about the impact of all this new tech and his ideas for getting heads of state aligned on what is a global situation. Because the way Alvin Grayland sees it, there are three possible paths for the future of AI. And being a total sci-fi nerd, Alvin has a movie reference for each one of these futures. First up, the dystopian thriller Elysium, starring Matt Damon. Where the year is 2154, most humans live on an overpopulated, disease-ridden planet
8:20 Manoush Zomorodi? Earth, while the uber wealthy live on a luxury space station called Elysium.
8:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, so the first future that is the most likely is you essentially have a few trillionaires and then you have the have-nots. And it is going to be ultra-stratified even more than we are today.
8:40 Manoush Zomorodi? So the Elysium version is this sort of future where there's extreme social and economic inequality and the wealthy techies sort of rule everything and the.
8:54 Manoush Zomorodi? Rest or kind of left behind?
8:57 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty much. And, and really with no, with no upward mobility. Right? I think in, in the past, what made America great was the American dream that if you work hard, good things can happen. And the fact that right now our, our governments are essentially captured by, by the oligarchs and by the, the industry leaders. It is going to just make that even go more extreme as these technology becomes smarter and more capable.
9:25 Manoush Zomorodi? The second path is even worse. It's what Alvin calls the Mad Max future, recalling the 1979 Australian dystopian action film with Mel Gibson.
9:37 Speaker 04 In the not-too-distant future, there will be no civilization. There will be no heroes. There will only be madmen.
9:47 Speaker 03 We right now have this AI race, technology race between US and China to, to get to AGI. And, uh, you know, that AI race gets to become an AI war. And then somehow it, it escalates into a kinetic war over maybe something related to Taiwan. And then, you know, out of, goes out of control and becomes a nuclear war. Because the ultimate destination of that future is, is escalation into nuclear war and a post-apocalypse and then taking essentially centuries to maybe regain the, the modernity that we have today.
10:22 Manoush Zomorodi? What is path number three? It's gotta be something better than those two, please.
10:26 Speaker 03 Yes. Um, the, the third future is actually what I call the Star Trek future.
10:34 Speaker 03 And it is something that essentially models after what happened with Star Trek. So in, in the Star Trek lore, essentially the Vulcans came to Earth. They were a rational, advanced species with, you know, advanced technologies. Live long and prosper. And they gave us these technologies, allow us to have a world of abundance. And then we started to, you know, discover the stars and pursue, you know, a self-actualization versus, uh, you know, greed and hoarding. I suspect our future is there waiting for us. We became a world of plenty and the technology enabled us. And so instead of relying on the kindness of an alien species, we actually now are creating AI,
11:17 Speaker 03 which is a rational, advanced technology that could bring us solutions to our problems. So it's actually a more liberating perspective because we get the control when this technology comes. We get the control how we use it.
11:31 Manoush Zomorodi? And so where are we now when it comes to which of these scenarios is most likely?
11:38 Speaker 03 Unfortunately, right now, we're not necessarily looking at it with the right perspective, that this should be a public good that should be shared. It's seen as a weapon of domination or a tool for self-gain or wealth. And those perspectives are going to lead us down a very dark path.
11:57 Manoush Zomorodi? So from your perspective, they're not at all thinking about the public good. All these companies are just racing to beat each other to develop artificial general intelligence, AGI. These are machines with human-level intelligence.
12:11 Speaker 03 Well, I think it's less about the AI's becoming sentient and doing things for itself. It's really more this race to AI. There's something called the strategic decisive advantage. It's an idea that whoever gets the AGI first will then use that power to self-improve and create what's called ASI, so artificial superintelligence. And when you get to ASI, then you have the power to dominate the world, right? And that's unfortunately what, right now, a lot of people in DC thinks is winning, is that they think it's, you know, getting to AGI first and then using it to, and in some people's words, send China back to the Stone Age.
12:56 Speaker 03 And that's very scary when that is the intent, not just to make yourself progress, but then to, you know, hold other people back. And what I asked these people when they said this is like, so do you think they would just let you do that? And they go, well, no, they'll probably fight back. And then, and I said, what happens when they fight back? Well, then we'll probably fight back some more. And then I say, what is that going to lead to? And he says, well, it means war, but, you know, war is inevitable. And when I hear things like this from people who are very influential in the decision-making process in America, it...
13:33 Speaker 03 It feels a little bit ignorant and it feels very scary. And I was in another conversation recently where there was senior people that said, "We can't let China cure cancer because that means we've lost." And to have that type of a mentality that curing cancer is something that only we can do, only America can do, and that anybody else doing good things for the world is seen as a bad thing, that is a very, I think, misguided view of the world.
14:07 Manoush Zomorodi? In a minute, the plan that Alvin and other scientists are mapping out to veer us away from these dark paths, and why he believes the AI arms race between China and the US is a huge distraction.
14:20 Speaker 03 If you listen to people like Peter Thiel, he says, "The only way to be successful is to create a monopoly and then to control everything." But the reality is that we need to change our mindset to agree that the world is not zero sum and that actually we can all win together.
14:36 Manoush Zomorodi? On the show today, who's really shaping the future of AI? I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.
14:58 Speaker 05 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
15:02 Manoush Zomorodi? This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high-fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready-to-cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3 at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from REI Co-op. At REI, they don't just sell outdoor gifts. They use them, test them, trust them. REI knows what to give this season, from joy rides, campfire cheers, or peak views.
15:45 Manoush Zomorodi? REI knows what to give the people you love who love to get out there because they're out there, too. Just stop in and ask a green vest. For the best gifts out there, shop in-store or at REI.com.
16:00 Speaker 05 This message comes from Planet Visionaries. If you're looking for a dose of optimism, Planet Visionaries is the podcast you need. Host Alex Honnold sits down this season with extraordinary doers, creating real climate action. It's a lineup that proves hope isn't naive, it's fuel for change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
16:27 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, we're asking, who is really shaping the future of AI? We were just talking to scholar, engineer, and entrepreneur Alvin Graylin. Alvin is an American technologist with roots in China, and for the last 35 years, he has been working in both places. And he believes it's a convenient strategy for American AI companies to say they need more data centers, more chips, and more money to beat China.
17:01 Speaker 03 A lot of companies are using that same refrain because it works, right? Because it's what the industrial, the military industrial complex have been using for nearly a century in terms of creating fear within the government and then helping then get more lenient regulations, more government support, more contracts, and more support from the politicians. And, you know, it's framed as a national competition when the reality is, I think, most of them realize that it is a competition right now between companies. And all of them are trying to figure out, how can I create a vote for myself?
17:44 Speaker 03 How can I create an advantage where I get there first? I want to be the guy who's known for, who invented AGI. And I want the fame and the glory and the monetary rewards associated with this. And in multiple interviews, you've heard people like Sam Altman say, hey, this is my responsibility to decide how this is going to be distributed. And to hear him say things like that, I feel, who gave him that right to be the person who decides this?
18:17 Manoush Zomorodi? Well, I guess the argument is that it's a national security issue that it starts by working with China to a certain extent, but always staying ahead.
18:28 Speaker 03 The US model, and if you look at the America's AI Action Plan, which is what came out of the White House kind of middle of this year, it said, we are going to race our way to the most advanced AI. And it's saying that by making, by doing whatever we can to build the biggest data centers and powering them with whatever means possible. And then we are going to take that AI and spread it to our allies. And nobody's, anybody who is going to be our friends has to use our stack, our chips and our models. And that's
19:08 Speaker 03 how we win, by creating a dependency where everybody in the world depends on us. And that's, it's a very one-sided perspective in terms of what winning means and how to win. But if you look at how China is looking at the AI space, they have a very different approach.
19:30 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, interesting. Tell me.
19:31 Speaker 03 There's actually something called the AI Plus Plan. And the AI Plus Plan is a 10-point plan to say, hey, how can we get AI into medicine? How can we get AI into manufacturing? How do we get AI into education? How do we get AI into agriculture, et cetera, et cetera? It's essentially saying, how do we deploy this technology so that we can make each of them more efficient and seeing the benefits into our population and our economy, where it's really looking for spreading the benefits of the technology to the larger community.
20:08 Manoush Zomorodi? But I feel like the story that we're hearing is, oh, the US has to win at AI because this is not just a competition of a marketplace, but it's a competition between two ideas of what the world should be, either democratic or authoritarian.
20:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, from a narrative perspective, it sounds really good and, you know, America, democracy, liberty, you want us to win. But if you look at what's being, I guess, propagated in terms of what the Chinese model is, three days after the US-America Action Plan, the Chinese published something called the Global AI Governance Plan. And their idea was that, hey, why don't we work together with the rest of the world to build an AI, advanced AI, that then incorporates everybody's data? And so we now have a more capable AI that we share to the world and we make it open source, rather than making it a tool for
21:06 Speaker 03 any one country or any one company to be successful. So if you look right now, that the leading five open source models in the world are all made by AI labs, right? You would think if China wants to dominate the world, they would be saying, hey, I want to create these big data centers and I'm going to make the big model and I'm going to keep it to myself so that I can beat America and, you know, beat democracy. And that's not what they're saying. They're saying, here's what I invented. And what you'll find right now is that universities and startups are using Chinese models for their research because it's open source, it's open license, you don't have to credit them for anything. You can use it commercially, you can use it for research, you could retrain on it. I
21:51 Speaker 03 mean, that, to me, doesn't sound like it's an evil plan to do bad things. It sounds like what America probably should also be doing as well.
22:02 Manoush Zomorodi? I mean, we have to acknowledge that, obviously, the United States is not a perfect nation, hardly, but in China, there is regular surveillance of citizens. There have been questionable human rights approaches to certain minority groups. They tightly control information, speech, sometimes behavior. So, so why should we think that China's like, oh, we're, we're going open source? What? We should all benefit from this?
22:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, you know, I am not saying that everything that the Chinese government does is perfect. And, you know, they, they have definitely a lot of their own faults and issues. And, you know, they're dealing with it with their own methods. But in terms of AI, and I've been studying this for, you know, 35 years, their approach from a technical perspective and from a innovation perspective actually makes a lot of sense. And the versions of these models that are available to their local population, you know, definitely has some level of, of internal censorship, you know, in terms of certain topics or certain facts. But the things that they are posting onto the downloadable sites
23:12 Speaker 03 for other people to download, those are unconstrained. And they're just the, the raw models. And you can then fine tune it to whatever, you know, methods or perspectives that you have. So from, from that perspective, I feel like, you know, even though you may not agree with everything in their politics, the, the way they're approaching AI is, is actually making sense from a global, um, good perspective.
23:39 Manoush Zomorodi? But by China going open source with its AI models, does it just look like they're taking the higher road with their tech, but actually, this is a way of expanding their influence with all the other countries that want to catch up with AI, of integrating other research into their own models?
24:02 Speaker 03 No, I, I think what you're saying actually is probably part of the intention of the government in terms of saying, how can we increase our soft power around the world? Right? Just like America has used Hollywood over the last 100 years as a way of, of instilling American values and, and, and kind of ideals to the world.
24:23 Manoush Zomorodi? So with all this in mind, how do we get on a better path? How do we avoid the Elysium and Mad Max futures that you described were possible earlier? And get to something more fruitful? It doesn't even have to be utopian. Let's survive.
24:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, if you listen to people like Peter Thiel, he says, you know, the only way to be successful is to create a monopoly and then to control everything. But the reality is that we need to change our mindset to agree that the world is not zero sum and that actually we can all win together. We get further, we use less resources, and we decide that, you know, the benefits that come from AI should be shared and is not seen as a weapon or as a tool for self-interest.
25:09 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah, so take us through, though. Help us envision what it could even look like.
25:12 Speaker 03 So the first part is that we essentially need to pool our resources. Instead of building trillions of dollars of new data centers, we can actually take the trillions of dollars we've already put into data centers and just say, hey, let's link them together. Let's create federated networks that we can then train large models together and create what I call a CERN for AI. And actually, it's not a new idea. It's been talked about for probably five, six years now of doing what we did for particle physics or what we, you know, did for fusion reactors, you know, with either. Or space science with the International Space Station, right, to have, you know, essentially groups of countries or the world come together
25:53 Speaker 03 and invest in a large capital expenditure, but then to take whatever comes out of it to share with the world.
26:01 Manoush Zomorodi? Is there a precedent for this? For, like, you mentioned the space station and CERN, which was, it's the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This is, you know, a global coming together of scientists in a way that everyone agreed. But is that what you're looking at?
26:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, if you look at the World Wide Web, actually, the concept of World Wide Web came from CERN. And, you know, we also did this from another natural disaster that happened to us, which was the ozone layer degradation. And, you know, over the 80s and 90s, we essentially came together with the Montreal Protocol and said, hey, let's all decide to stop doing the making CFCs. And now the ozone actually layer has started to, you know, come back and become much more healthy and normal for us. Right? So we can work together, countries can work together when we realize that it is for our collective good. And to make this CERN for AI possible, we also need to create something I called a global AI data pool. Right? Or data cloud.
27:04 Speaker 03 Essentially, taking everybody's language, their culture, their science, their history, and put it into one source so that we can train this AI to understand the world wholly, not to understand one single perspective.
27:18 Manoush Zomorodi? Is there a conversation going on behind the scenes amongst scientists about how to actually do this? Because the creators of these companies are all about maximizing profits. And presumably, they don't want to be a part of it.
27:32 Speaker 03 Well, so actually, there are these conversations. And it's people like Yashua Bengio or Demis Hasabis or Geoffrey Hinton, who are, you know, some of the godfathers of AI, who have seen this technology grow and have seen and understand the capabilities of these technologies. And they're advocating for a CERN, for AI type model. But unfortunately, a lot of the politicians aren't listening, right? I mean, we need to get past this politicization of this technology. And we need to see AI and the benefits that it provides as a public good.
28:11 Speaker 03 I mean, it sounds like idealistic utopia, but we are actually at a point where it's possible. You know, before, we lived in a world of scarcity and when hoarding and fighting made a difference. But if we are at the one yard line of getting to a place where we can have a technology that brings us abundance, we don't need to fight anymore. And we need to realize that and let that happen.
28:33 Manoush Zomorodi? That was author and entrepreneur Alvin Graylin. His book is called Our Next Reality: How the AI-Powered Metaverse Will Reshape the World. You can watch his conversation with me on the TED stage at ted.com.
28:50 Manoush Zomorodi? So Alvin Wang Graylin thinks the US and China should be cooperating on AI a lot more than they are. What is the likelihood of that? And is AI competition really just an American thing? I decided to follow up on my conversation with Alvin by talking to NPR's John Ruwitch. John, you were based in China for years. You covered politics and tech there, among many things. And now you're back in the US covering politics and tech from Silicon Valley. So, so give us your perspective on this AI arms race. Is it mostly a story that American tech CEOs are telling to lock down their tech to get more investment, avoid regulation, as Alvin explains it?
29:35 Speaker 06 Yeah. From my perspective, like, yes, to a certain extent, but, right? Yes, that's capitalism. The corporate competition is real, absolutely. But there is definitely more to this arms race mentality, I think, than just business. I was, a few months ago, I had a conversation with a venture capitalist. And, you know, he was telling me that there had been this debate and discussion around the safety of AI and that companies in the United States had potentially discussed banding together, maybe sort of hitting pause on sort of the breakneck speed at which everybody was racing towards AGI, if that's where they were headed, to sort of set some rules.
30:19 Speaker 06 But then DeepSeek R1 happened. That was the release in January of a Chinese AI model. And it was kind of a Sputnik moment. Like, DeepSeek did things that people did not think China was capable of doing because of the restrictions on high-end microchips going to China. They did things, but they kind of circumvented the embargo on chips to put forward an AI model, an AI product, that was pretty darn good and pretty close to what American companies were doing. So the discussion shifted to national security. Everybody was like, okay, China's for real and we need to go, we need to go at it again.
30:55 Manoush Zomorodi? So tell us more about China's approach to AI. Because- I think in the US, AI is mostly making people kind of nervous for all sorts of reasons. Their jobs, the amount of energy it uses, the slop it can produce. But what have you learned about how regular people feel about AI there?
31:16 Speaker 06 Yeah, so in China, the government is obviously very focused and strategic in its thinking about AI. And so I went on a trip to China in October and did some reporting around AI in society, basically. And one of the places we went was an elementary school in Beijing. And at this elementary school, and in fact, at all K through 12 schools in Beijing, starting this fall semester, they started to fold education about AI and education on sort of how AI is created and how you can use it into the computer literacy programs that they run. So we went and we talked to a couple of 10-year-olds, fourth graders, talked to their parents, talked to the teacher about what this AI education was like.
31:56 Speaker 06 And as you can imagine, like, it's not in-depth, but they are being consciously and proactively familiarized with artificial intelligence, with how to use it. They're using it to do drawings, to do images, for instance. The parents were very clear-eyed about the project, which I thought was interesting. They basically were all, sort of all-in on it because they see it as, you know, it is this technology that's coming down the pipe. The government backs it, it's coming for us. And the only way for our kids to have a future is to start to understand it.
32:31 Manoush Zomorodi? So we have the Trump administration with its American AI Action Plan, focusing on maintaining America's dominance, countering China. And then, a couple of years ago, President Xi released his Global AI Governance Initiative. And it's completely different. It's an open source, sharing AI models, data, security, bridging the digital divide. What's your sense about how politics and interests are fueling these different approaches? And are they sort of veering away from each other or coming to a head?
33:06 Speaker 06 Yeah, context is sort of key here for China. There's been this program. It's sort of part of the party's DNA now to to build influence and clout around the world, make the world safe for, you know, the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese way of, you know, politics. And I think the global AI governance initiative at least has two sides to it. One is the altruistic part, right? Let's, let's, let's work on this together. Let's do it together. It's also sort of a textbook example of, of how China, how China operates, how China builds power and, and helps itself in the world.
33:41 Manoush Zomorodi? Just sort of like, look at us. We're available. What are you, what's the big fuss about? That kind of thing?
33:46 Speaker 06 Exactly. Right. Look, we're being big about this. We're trying to fix the problem. We're trying to get everybody together. Let's all work together. And it's easier for an underdog to say that than somebody who's got the top AI companies, right? And as an underdog, why not, you know, try to get as much cooperation and collaboration as you can, because that can advance your own technology, right? It's very practical for, for, for China, which doesn't have the, the data centers or the, the compute firepower that the US has, right? It can help accelerate development even. It's also practical for what we were just talking about, China, in terms of, you know, garnering friends and allies and building influence.
34:29 Manoush Zomorodi? In a minute, more with John Ruich on what all this AI competition really means for the rest of us. On the show today, who is shaping the future of AI? I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.
35:00 Speaker 05 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
35:04 Manoush Zomorodi? This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high-fructose corn syrup.
35:18 Manoush Zomorodi? Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from REI Co-op. At REI, they don't just sell outdoor gifts. They use them, test them, trust them. REI knows what to give this season. From joy rides, campfire cheers, or peak views. REI knows what to give the people you love who love to get out there because they're out there, too. Just stop in and ask a green vest. For the best gifts out there, shop in store or at REI.com.
36:02 Speaker 05 This message comes from Planet Visionaries. If you're looking for a dose of optimism, Planet Visionaries is the podcast you need. Host Alex Honnold sits down this season with extraordinary doers, creating real climate action. It's a lineup that proves hope isn't naive. It's fuel for change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
36:29 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, we are asking, who is really shaping the future of AI? We were just talking to NPR tech correspondent John Ruwitch about the latest twists in US-China tech relations, including the Trump administration's recent move to let Nvidia sell advanced AI chips to China. So what does a move like this actually signal? A thaw? A strategic gesture? Or something more complicated?
37:02 Speaker 06 I mean, from people I've talked to, from a technical perspective, are scratching their heads, like chip experts or China experts. They're saying, you know, this is the sort of perhaps the one advantage that we have over China. Like, China has more and cheaper electricity than we have, which is critical for data centers. China, I read a stat the other day that said over 40% of Chinese college graduates are in STEM. That's twice the rate in the United States, right? So like, they've got the people, they've got the electricity, they've got the political will for sure. They don't, they can't get their hands on the chips and now they're sending these chips over. I don't, I, people, one guy I spoke with said it's like, it's almost the equivalent of folks in, who are working on the Manhattan Project to develop the first
37:47 Speaker 06 nuclear bomb, just handing blueprints over.
37:49 Manoush Zomorodi? You did just get back from Taiwan where the factories are that produce 90% of the world's semiconductor chips, the ones that are needed to power AI. Can you just tell us about what you saw there?
38:02 Speaker 06 Yeah, I was in China for about two weeks. On the way out, I stopped in Taiwan and took a train down to a town called Xinzu, which is on the west coast. It's like 100 miles due east of the Chinese coast and went to visit TSMC. There's a science park there where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC, was established in 1987. So over the past 40 years, this company has become the dominant player in, in contract chip manufacturing. And they're in everything. They're in your iPhone, they're in your car, they're in satellites, they're in F-35 fighter jets, on and on and on. And I talked
38:41 Speaker 06 to the CFO who, you know, it was really interesting, like, politics, the politics around microchips, the politics of Taiwan, China was kind of a, a black hole. Every time I raised it, he avoided answering it and he would talk about the customers and what the customers want. And the interesting thing about that is that the customers are being pushed very strongly by political winds. And that's the reason why in 2020, TSMC decided they would set up a chip making facility in Arizona. They've got plans to expand their operations in Japan, Germany also for the auto industry. And he basically said, they're, they're, he didn't say it in so many words, but he said, they're outgrowing Taiwan.
39:26 Manoush Zomorodi? So I was at a conference a couple of months ago where there were, it was off the record and many economists and former government officials were warning, like, Taiwan is the reason the US and China will inevitably go to war. So based on what you're saying, is that overblown? Because it sounds like- Chip production is going to be spread well beyond Taiwan.
39:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's a good point. Chip production is now, they're expanding beyond Taiwan. I will say TSMC's CFO told me they will continue to invest in Taiwan. But I do think it's fair to say that Taiwan is probably the most likely reason that China and the US would have a fight. I mean, the South China Sea might be another possibility if there were some sort of, you know, accident to happen that spiraled out of control. But the most sort of dire consequences would come from war over Taiwan. Beijing considers it part of China, as you know. The US government is bound by law to help Taiwan arm itself, to prepare it to deter and repel a Chinese invasion, basically.
40:32 Speaker 06 And the US has had a policy of strategic ambiguity when it comes to Taiwan. It's a tenuous situation, but it has been for 80 years, right?
40:40 Manoush Zomorodi? So that brings us back to Alvin Graylin. I mean, when I talk to him, you know, in some ways, I'm like, oh, this China-US thing, it's not so intense. And then you hear him describe the Mad Max future and you think, this is a disaster. I don't even know what to make of it.
40:59 Speaker 06 Well, there's a couple of thoughts I have. One is I'm glad, I'm glad he's out there saying these things because if there's a way to find some sort of middle ground, some small like academic committee that can then grow over time or expand to include government and then be a way for Beijing and Washington to talk about this stuff, maybe start to think about moving forward in ways that they can cooperate, great. But the other thought I had was that he, he seems to be a product of Silicon Valley. And this is the place where people, you know, come up with audacious ideas and pitch them and they're pretty good at pitching them.
41:40 Speaker 06 Like, it's, I don't know what would ever, at this point, I don't see what would push the US and China to. Cooperate on AI or to talk about cooperating on AI without a crisis or a near crisis.
41:54 Manoush Zomorodi? You know, it makes me want to ask, are we missing a trick? In the United States, tech companies are so focused on getting consumers to buy subscriptions to these products and they're being so protective of their tech. Meanwhile, many people are terrified that they're going to lose their jobs because AI will replace them. But then there's China trying to diffuse AI throughout their whole society and make it available, open source to other countries. They seem to have a more practical and strategic rollout in some ways.
42:27 Speaker 06 I think each country has its advantages, right? I think one thing about the US system is that that Wild West mentality sort of applies. It's like, this is the cutting edge of capitalism. This is hardcore capitalism. There are winners and there are losers. And I think that there are reasons why China does it the Chinese way. We don't know what's going to happen with AI yet, but they've done a lot to make life more comfortable in, for instance, their cities or across the country. It also fits into sort of this broader, that broader context of China building influence, building cloud, making itself indispensable in the world.
43:09 Speaker 06 If it's the one driving this plan, if it's the one that can get buy-in from its, the ally countries that it works with, that perhaps are, you know, more open to using open source or for whom closed source is too expensive, right?
43:26 Manoush Zomorodi? I've got sort of a hot take, which is, you know, American, well, Chinese society locked down, but open source software, whereas in the US, it's the other way around. They're locking down their tech, but it's sort of open source humans. Do you know what I mean? They kind of like let us loose and help let us figure it out. And then wherever the marketplace takes us, well, that's where we go, for better or worse.
43:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, that works. The open source thing about Chinese tech, though, too, though, it's open source for the code and for to figure out how to do it. But you can't, like, if you're in China, you can't ask DeepSeek, hey, tell me about what happened on June 4th, 1989 in Tiananmen Square and get a straight answer.
44:05 Manoush Zomorodi? Right, right.
44:06 Speaker 06 And that is. Open to, open to a degree and then not open. And believe me, I think if China had this technology locked down and the US was following, I don't think they'd be open source with it.
44:20 Manoush Zomorodi? Mm hmm.
44:23 Manoush Zomorodi? So you're saying, watch this space. We might be seeing a lockdown on these models in the future if they catch up?
44:30 Speaker 06 Maybe, yeah, if they can, if they catch up, if they surpass, if they've got something like, yeah, off the wall, perhaps. The DeepSeek guys, DeepSeek was, is a private company. I guess they got some, I'm not, actually, I'm not exactly sure where they got their funding, but, you know, after the model came out in January and blew everybody's minds, they were not available. You could not talk to them, you could not, you could not get anywhere near them. Was that because the cyberspace administration said to them, yeah, we need to talk? Or you should not talk to the press? Or were these guys just savvy? We don't know.
45:12 Manoush Zomorodi? 2026, John, I'm excited.
45:15 Speaker 06 Pumped, getting fired up for it.
45:19 Manoush Zomorodi? Excellent. I mean, the saga is just gonna get more interesting. Let's hope it doesn't veer into those terrifying territories just yet.
45:27 Speaker 06 Let's cross our fingers.
45:29 Manoush Zomorodi? That was John Ruwitch. He's NPR's tech correspondent and he is based in San Francisco.
45:35 Manoush Zomorodi? So we've talked a lot about American tech CEOs this hour. So now let's hear directly from one. Earlier this year, OpenAI's Sam Altman sat down for a grilling by TED's Chris Anderson. Sam took pains to stress that he's thinking less about geopolitics and more about us, the users. Here he is with Chris on the TED stage in Vancouver in April.
46:01 Speaker 07 Sam, welcome to TED. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, it's an honor. Your company has been releasing crazy, insane new models pretty much every other week, it feels like. But talk about what is the scariest thing that you've seen? Because it like outside, a lot of people picture you as, you know, you have access to this stuff and you, we hear all these rumors coming out of AI and it's like, oh my God, they've seen consciousness or they've seen AGI or they've seen some kind of apocalypse coming.
46:31 Speaker 08 There have been like moments of awe. And I think with that is always like, how far is this gonna go? What is this gonna be? But we don't secretly have, you know, we're not secretly sitting on a conscious model or something that's capable of self-improvement or anything like that. I continue to believe there will come very powerful models that people can misuse in big ways. People talk a lot about the potential for new kinds of bioterror, models that can present like a real cybersecurity challenge, models that are capable of self-improvement in a way that leads to some sort of loss of control. So I think there are big risks there.
47:08 Speaker 07 Do you check for that internally before release?
47:11 Speaker 08 Of course, yeah. So we have this preparedness framework that outlines how we do that. And we are very proud of the safety track record.
47:18 Speaker 07 But we're talking about an exponentially growing power that we fear that we may wake up one day and the world is ending. So it's really not about trial critics, it's about plausibly saying that the pieces are in place to shut things down quickly if we see a danger.
47:34 Speaker 08 Oh, yeah, yeah, no, of course, of course, that's important. But the way we learn how to build safe systems is this iterative process of deploying them to the world, getting feedback while the stakes are relatively low, learning about like, hey, this is something we have to address. And I think as we move into these agentic systems, there's a whole big category of new things we have to learn to address.
47:55 Speaker 07 So let's talk about agentic systems and the relationship between that and AGI. So artificial general intelligence, it feels like ChatGPT is already a general intelligence. I can ask it about anything and it comes back with an intelligent answer. Why isn't that AGI?
48:12 Speaker 08 It doesn't continuously learn and improve. It can't go get better at something that it's currently weak at. It can't go discover new science and update its understanding and do that. And it can't just sort of do any knowledge work you could do in front of a computer. You can't say like, hey, go do this task for my job and it goes off and clicks around the internet and calls someone and looks at your files and does it. And without that, it feels definitely short of it.
48:40 Speaker 07 In a world where agency is out there and say that, you know, maybe it's open models are widely distributed. Are there red lines that you have clearly drawn internally where you know we cannot put out something that could go beyond this?
48:57 Speaker 08 Yeah, so this is the purpose of our preparedness framework. We and we'll update that over time, but we've tried to outline where we think the most important danger moments are. I can tell from the conversation you wish AI, you're not a big AI fan.
49:14 Speaker 07 Actually, on the contrary, I use it every day. I'm awed by it. You know, I think it's essential to hold a passionate belief in the possibility, but not be over seduced by it because things could go horribly wrong.
49:27 Speaker 08 No, no, I.
49:32 Speaker 08 I totally understand that. I totally understand looking at this and saying, this is an unbelievable change coming to the world. And maybe I don't want this, or maybe I love talking to chat GPT, but I worry about what's going to happen to art and I worry about the pace of change. And and maybe I maybe on balance, I wish this weren't happening, or maybe I wish we're happening a little slower. I think the fear is totally rational, but A, there will be tremendous upside. B, I really believe that society figures out over time, with some big mistakes along the way, how to get technology right. And C, this is gonna happen. This is like a discovery of fundamental physics that the world now knows about. And it's gonna be part of our world.
50:16 Speaker 08 We have to embrace this with caution, but not fear.
50:19 Speaker 07 There are two narratives about you out there. One is, you know, you are this incredible visionary who's done the impossible. But the other narrative is that you. Have shifted ground, that you've shifted from being OpenAI, this open thing, to the allure of building something super powerful. What are your core values, Sam, that can give us, the world, confidence that someone with so much power here is entitled to it?
50:47 Speaker 08 Look, I think like anyone else, I'm a nuanced character that doesn't reduce well to one dimension here. So, you know, probably some of the good things are true and probably some of the criticism is true. In terms of OpenAI, our goal is to make AGI and distribute it, make it safe for the broad benefit of humanity. I think by all accounts, we have done a lot in that direction. Clearly, our tactics have shifted over time. I do think it's fair that we should be open sourcing more. I think it was reasonable, as we weren't sure about the impact these systems were going to have and how to make them safe, that we acted with precaution. But now I think we have a better understanding as a world, and it is time for us to put very capable open systems out into the world.
51:32 Speaker 08 But, you know, there's trade-offs in everything we do. And we are one player in this one voice, in this AI revolution, trying to do the best we can and kind of steward this technology into the world in a responsible way.
51:47 Speaker 07 This was a beautiful thing you posted. Your son, I mean, that last thing you said, that I've never felt love like this. I think any parent in the room so knows that feeling, that wild biological feeling that humans have and AIs never will, of your holding your kid. What kind of world do you believe, all things considered, your son will grow up into?
52:10 Speaker 08 I remember when the first iPad came out, it's like 15 years, something like that, watching a YouTube video at the time of like a little toddler sitting in, you know, a doctor's office waiting room or something. And there was a magazine, like one of those old glossy cover magazines, and the toddler had his hand on it and was going like this and kind of angry. And to that toddler, it was like a broken iPad. And he never, she never thought of a world that didn't have, you know, touchscreens in them. And to all the adults watching this, it was this amazing thing because it was like, it's so new, it's so amazing, it's a miracle. Like, of course, you know, magazines are the way the world works.
52:52 Speaker 08 My kid, my kids, hopefully, will never be smarter than AI. They will never grow up in a world where products and services are not incredibly smart, incredibly capable. They will never grow up in a world where computers don't just kind of understand you. And it'll be a world where like, individual ability, impact, whatever, is just so far beyond what a person can do today. I mean, that's great.
53:22 Speaker 07 It's incredible what you've built.
53:24 Speaker 08 Thank you very much.
53:25 Speaker 07 Thank you for coming.
53:26 Manoush Zomorodi? That was OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman onstage with TED's Chris Anderson. You can watch the full conversation at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week, and Happy New Year. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone and edited by Sanaz Meshkhanpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Delahoussaye, Matthew Cloutier, Harsha Nahada, Fiona Girin, Phoebe Lett, and Rachel Faulkner White. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Stacey Abbott, Becky Brown, and Zoe Vangenhoven. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners
54:08 Manoush Zomorodi? at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxane Hylash, and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
54:17 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
Previous Soundtracks of our lives Next Who counts as a significant other? Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
