On with Kara Swisher

We’re on the cusp of an artificial intelligence arms race that has venture capitalists drooling, regulators petrified and competitors from Google to Microsoft to Elon Musk racing to get their products out the door. Kara talks to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and the man who’s led the launches of ChatGPT and GPT-4. They discuss the hallucinations of ChatGPT+, why Open AI moved from an open-source nonprofit to a closed-source “capped profit” company and why Altman doesn’t believe artificial intelligence developers should enjoy Section 230 immunity. Afterwards, Kara and Nayeema break down the interview and the promises and perils of an unknowable A.I.-powered future. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From AI and the recent launch of GPT-4 to behind-the-scenes pressure on Washington to resolve the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, today’s guest is in the thick of it all. Kara tells Nayeema that Reid Hoffman is “one of the good ones.” Kara has known the billionaire Greylock VC Partner since the 90s, when he was fresh off the sale of PayPal and before he co-founded LinkedIn. Today they discuss Hoffman’s donations to Biden and other Democrats, how his political views have impacted his friendships with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and why he is so bullish on AI. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a quick rundown of Kara’s Twitter feud with SVB-enthusiast David Sacks, we turn to an interview with a former Silicon Valley Bank customer: Kevin Systrom. When you found one of the most successful social media apps at 27, it’s tough to figure out where to go with Act Two. But after leaving Facebook (now Meta) in 2018, Systrom is back with an AI-powered news-reader called Artifact which has been dubbed a “Tiktok for Text.” Onstage at SXSW this weekend, as the SVB crisis was playing out, Kara and Kevin discuss his regrets about Instagram, his plans to crack the news business and what’s wrong with tech bros.   Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Does Kara ever get sick of talking about Elon Musk? That’s a question Nayeema asks today, and they both agree: as exhausting as he can be, Elon is a defining force in business, media and innovation. So today we turn to the titan’s biographer: Walter Isaacson. He’s written the book on everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Steve Jobs, and is now deep in the Elon Files.  Taped in front of a live audience at the New Orleans Book Festival, Kara and Isaacson discuss whether Elon is driven primarily by narcissism or mission (aka the “prick to productivity ratio”), how Elon does and doesn’t compare to Steve Jobs, and how Isaacson approaches his job as a biographer of some of the world's biggest personalities, both alive and dead. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, Kara sits down with Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s nominated for her first Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, and Donna Langley, the Universal Film Studio head who greenlit “Cocaine Bear.” Taped in front of a live audience at the Upfront Summit, the trio talks about why the revival of the “Halloween” series became such a box office hit – and how it’s led to a whole new chapter in Curtis’s career. Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema share their Oscar predictions and stay tuned for the end to find out what not-so-funny joke that Chris Wallace played on Kara (no, not that Chris Wallace). Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kara has interviewed Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff many times but he says she'd never been as prepared to grill him as she was this time. It’s a showdown between a savvy CEO who is deft at turning the tables…and an interviewer who is unafraid to pin him down. Taped in front of a live audience at the Upfront Summit, the two tackle whether Marc will be able to keep up the victory lap of a surprisingly strong earnings report, his succession plan, their divergent takes on a divisive Elon Musk – and why having activist investors breathing down his neck is “fun” for Benioff.  Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is AI going to fall in love with you? Write your term papers? Or help you plan a trip to Belize? The answer to all three is: maybe. How well it does any of those things remains to be seen, but Kara tells Nayeema the fast-developing AI will be more significant than almost anything else she's covered in tech. To understand the it, we’re joined by Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, who is in charge of rolling out the new, AI-powered Bing. On the agenda: how the tech works, why the launch demo was buggy, the ethical considerations of a new technology and what Bill Gates has to say about AI. Thoughts? Questions? Email us on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A year after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and weeks after the presence of a Chinese spy balloon led U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to put off his Beijing visit, Kara and Nayeema talk about where the U.S. stands in the world and whether President Biden has the global coalition and momentum he claims. These are great questions for our guest today, Richard Haass. The foreign policy expert helms the Council on Foreign Relations and has had a long career in the Carter, Reagan and both Bush administrations as well as beyond working on intractable challenges from Northern Ireland to Iraq. Kara asks him why America’s global standing is on the decline, how Biden should deal with Xi and why his most recent book looks not to the rest of the world, but to our domestic problems.  Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Justice Kagan has asked, “Every other industry has to internalize the costs of its conduct. Why is it that the tech industry gets a pass?” Yet she and the other 8 Supreme Court Justices seemed wary this week as they heard oral arguments in two cases that could upend the Section 230 immunity that social media companies enjoy, Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh. Today, we hear from three experts: Stanford Law professor Evelyn Douek, National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen and UC Berkeley computer science professor Hany Farid. Up for discussion — what’s at stake in these two cases, which way the wind seems to be blowing and, of course, will killing Section 230 kill the internet? Questions? Comments? Email us on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI isn’t just changing search. It’s changing national security, too. Today, Kara talks to Trae’ Stephens, the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril, about how the growing defense tech industry is using the power of AI and the speed of Silicon Valley to challenge “beltway bandits” like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. They discuss drones in Ukraine, the ethics of “smart walls” along the US-Mexico border and, yes, those balloons.  Thoughts? Questions? Email us on@voxmedia.com or find us Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Congressman Ken Buck is a Republican from Colorado who’s decided to take on “Big Tech.” He talks about his proposed TikTok ban, the uphill battle for antitrust legislation and why he’s defending Elon’s “free speech” push. Thoughts? Questions? Email us on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter (if you can in this new, Elon-centric algorithm) @karaswisher and @nayeema Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After Kara and Nayeema debrief the latest Elon drama (the Congressional hearings in which conservatives failed to prove they’d been “censored” on Twitter), we dive into our interview with Representative Ruben Gallego. The Arizona congressman is the only contender so far in the 2024 race for Kyrsten Sinema’s coveted U.S. Senate seat … though he tells Kara he’d welcome the opportunity to face “Queen MAGA” Kari Lake in the race. And he explains why he’s not worried even if Senator Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in December, runs in a three-way race.  Also, Gallego discusses some of the issues of identity politics and wedge issues that we also heard with last week’s guest Brooke Jenkins. You can listen to that episode here, if you missed it.  Thoughts? Email us on@voxmedia.com or find us Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We discuss Biden's State of the Union speech — and the state of the Democratic party — with three of the party's savviest strategists: Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager Faiz Shakir, former White House Communications Director (and host of The Circus) Jennifer Palmieri, and Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart.  On the agenda: how Marjorie Taylor Greene's State of the Union heckling made President Biden shine, how Democrats have rallied in response to Trump, whether the party can win the narrative and wedge-issue wars...and, of course, if Biden is running in 2024. Tell us what you think. Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Donald Trump to George Floyd and Tyre Nichols, the last five years have changed our national conversation about public safety and policing. That’s particularly true in San Francisco, where progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin lost his seat in a heated recall election last year, and today’s guest — SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins — stepped into the powerful role. In the months since she assumed office, the Black and Latina DA has spoken of the city’s “lawlessness,” revoked plea deals, allowed more teenagers to be prosecuted as adults and pushed for more policing of drug dealing. Her critics say she’s too conservative for the notoriously liberal city. She says she’s creating consequences for those who break the law.  As Kara tells Jenkins, “Only in a city like San Francisco could they call you a conservative.” You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.  Or email us! on@voxmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, Nayeema sits down with dating industry veteran Lakshmi Rengarajan and journalist Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz before we play you an episode of the podcast they host — Land of the Giants: Dating Games. In conversation, the three explore the business of online dating, the incentive apps have to keep users swiping and the power the people who run and build these dating services have in shaping our love lives. Kara and Nayeema will be back on Monday with a fresh episode of On with Kara Swisher. Until then, find them on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. __ Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, The League. If you’ve ever wondered why using these different dating apps feels similar, it may be because they’re all owned by Match Group, the company that helped start online dating in the 90s, and now owns two-thirds of the dating app market. Today, Match is a dating app conglomerate with millions of users and over 45 brands around the world. That’s billions of dollars worth of swipes and subscriptions. But does paying for what Match Group calls “superpowers” — things like Hinge’s ‘roses’ and Tinder’s ‘super likes’ — get users any closer to connecting with real-life people?  • Hosted by Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz (@sangeetaskurtz) and Lakshmi Rengarajan (@Shmi_So_Far) • Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear next week's episode by hitting the plus sign in your favorite podcast app • Follow @TheCut and @verge on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Meta announced Donald Trump would be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram, it wasn’t the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg who made the decision. He punted. So why is an executive who holds such control hiding from the power he has amassed? Kara has some ideas — she’s covered Mark from the jump, seen him sweat through interviews and gotten Mark to say things he probably wishes he hadn’t. So today, we then turn the tables and Kara Swisher is On with Nayeema Raza.  Together, Nayeema and Kara unpack an oral history of a company that, for far too long, hid behind the idea of being a small start-up and used that excuse to shamelessly make — and shamelessly repeat — costly mistakes. They journey through the first days of Facebook, examine how the company has navigated controversies from Cambridge Analytica to the Trump decision… and get a sense of why Kara will probably never get to interview Mark again.  You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rapid-fire layoffs, activist investors at the gate and tumbling stock prices — tech has had a bad year. But Kara tells Nayeema she’s seen it all before and that the industry, if not all its captains, will survive this shake-up, too. In the panel interview, Kara is joined by two other journalists: Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, a scoop-laden tech news platform covering Silicon Valley, and William Cohan, a former M&A banker and a founding partner at Puck, another excellent source for scoops.  They tackle what’s behind the long decline, and recent rally, of tech stocks, and when and how the Valley will bounce back. Then they zoom in on what Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Netflix will need to zoom in on to survive the storm. And Jessica offers a theory: the time is ripe for a changing of the old tech guard. Sorry, Elon — it may be time to step aside.  You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In his first extensive interview since he stepped down as the Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy on the National Economic Council, Tim Wu shares what he learned in the West Wing. We find out who holds most sway with the President, how Lina Khan undid any perception that there is any antitrust exception for “nice guys,” and get Wu’s predictions on lawsuits against Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. Also: Kara presses him on why Biden — who campaigned on getting rid of Section 230 and hinted at breaking up Big Tech — hasn’t been able to make much headway when it comes to regulating Silicon Valley. Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema look at exits, from Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, to Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. And among all the exits, they also discuss one possible return: Meta’s looming decision regarding Donald Trump’s Facebook account. You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter at @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’re bringing you an episode of the podcast Intelligence Squared, which provides a forum for balanced debate where people disagree — but talk about it.  Today, it’s Kara Swisher vs. Anthony Scaramucci. And the question is: Is Elon Musk Killing Twitter? Shockingly, Kara argues yes. You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter at @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He was King Charles’s Communications Chief for almost a decade. She wrote the book on Charles (literally). Our guests today – Patrick Harverson and Catherine Mayer – are two insiders who take us beyond the media spectacle and into the inner workings of both the Crown and the British media. They consider whether the revelations inside Prince Harry’s best-selling book “Spare” will shake-up a stodgy palace. They discuss the unquenching hunger of the tabloid machine, debate the resilience of the monarchy – and examine whether the response to this royal controversy hints at a deeper culture war brewing in Britain. Finally, they unpack an emotion that permeates Harry’s pages: grief.  Kara and Nayeema taped this episode in London where they were joined by Brooke Hammerling, a strategic communications expert and Kara’s go-to source for all things royal. Before and after the interview, the trio looks at how people on both sides of the pond are responding to the book’s many revelations. And Brooke shares why a tell-all … may not have been the best strategy for Harry and Meghan. You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter at @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices