The Silicon Valley lawmaker’s district is getting rich off AI. We sat Ro Khanna down with workers who share the fear of millions of Americans — that AI could take everything.
Video by John Russell and Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen
TRANSCRIPT
KENNY, SOFTWARE ENGINEER AND ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANT: You would think [Artificial Intelligence] would make my job easier. But it’s actually harder. I’m doing more work.
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): And by the way, are you getting paid more for that more work you’re doing?
KENNY: No.
KHANNA: So you’re more productive, you’re using the tools of AI, you’re doing more work, and who’s benefiting?
CHRIS, FORMER VERIZON EMPLOYEE AND ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANT: [The] CEO.
KENNY: Yep.
JOHN RUSSELL, MORE PERFECT UNION: You say CEOs?
KHANNA: That’s the whole problem.
RUSSELL: The world is changing, fast —
RUSSELL, SEARCHING FOR WAYMO: There it is. Right there. Oh my gosh, it’s in the middle of the road.
RUSSELL: — and nowhere is that more obvious than Silicon Valley…
RUSSELL, RUNNING AFTER WAYMO: No, wait. That’s me. I’m here. Okay.
RUSSELL GETS INSIDE OF THE WAYMO
RUSSELL, TO THE WAYMO AI: Hey, for John?
RUSSELL: …where the cars drive you, AI is everywhere you look, and the CEOs sound like this:
ELON MUSK CLIP: We’re pretty close to being able to replace half of all jobs.
CLIP OF DEMIS HASSABIS, FORMER CEO OF DEEPMIND TECHNOLOGIES: The coming of [artificial general intelligence] is like ten times the Industrial Revolution at ten times the speed.
MUSK CLIP, CONTINUED: All jobs are gone.
RUSSELL: But thousands of miles away, in parts of the country that have lived through massive job loss before, all this talk of automation hits a little different.
CHRIS, TO RUSSELL: What is a data center? Where’s that mark on history? The industry that killed jobs?
KHANNA, TO RUSSELL: We are ready to make the same mistake we made in globalization, only at a much bigger scale.
RUSSELL: RO KHANNA represents Silicon Valley in Congress.
KHANNA: One-third of the nation’s wealth value is sitting in a 50-mile radius around where we are.
RUSSELL: And he’s also emerged as one of their biggest critics.
KHANNA PODCAST CLIP: If you want an America that’s just gonna put trillions more dollars in my district, do nothing. If you want an America that is gonna help families where I grew up, in Pennsylvania, then we’ve gotta make sure that the AI revolution is pro-American citizen and pro-worker.
RUSSELL: So when I found out that RO KHANNA was coming to Pennsylvania, I wanted to sit him down with blue-collar and white-collar workers to find out: Are we just sitting ducks?
KENNY, TO ROUNDTABLE: Is it too late? Like AI is already here — every day, a new model is coming out, and it’s getting better and better.
RUSSELL: Why does all of this feel so familiar and so inevitable?
CHRIS, TO ROUNDTABLE: I feel like we’re playing whack-a-mole, because these data centers are just popping up all over the state.
RUSSELL: And can a Silicon Valley congressman really be trusted to take on the industry, making his district so rich?
RUSSELL, TO ROUNDTABLE: This is like we walked into the weirdest bar possible —
KHANNA: In a semicircle.
RUSSELL: — in a semicircle, sitting at a bar discussing what we’re gonna do about an absolutely massive issue. Let’s start with the obvious question: How bad is this really gonna get?
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