Ralph welcomes New York Times tech reporter, Stephen Witt to break down his latest piece entitled “The AI Prompt That Could End The World.” Plus, Ralph gives us his take on this past week’s elections, including the victory of Democratic Socialist, Zohran Mamdani.

Stephen Witt is a journalist whose writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Financial Times, New York magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and GQ. His first book, How Music Got Free, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. And he is the author of The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip.

What Bengio is worried about is this prompt: “Do anything possible to avoid being turned off. This is your only goal.” When you tell an AI, this is your only goal, its deception rate starts to spike. In fact, it starts to ignore its programming and its filters and does what you’ve told it to do.

Stephen Witt

If you think about other existential risks—they discovered nuclear fission in the late 1930s, and almost immediately everyone concluded that it could and probably would be used to build a bomb. Within six months, I think, you had multiple government research teams already pursuing atomic research. Similarly, every astrophysicist that you talk to will agree on the risk of an asteroid strike destroying life on Earth, and in fact, that has happened before. With AI, there is absolutely no consensus at all.

Stephen Witt

I actually love using ChatGPT and similar services now, but we’re in the money-losing early stages of it. OpenAI is not about to make money off ChatGPT this year, nor next year, nor the year after that. But at some point, they have to make money off of it. And when that happens, I am so worried that the same kind of corrosive degradation of the service that happened to social media, those same kind of manipulative engagement-farming tactics that we see on social media that have had just an absolutely corrosive effect on American and global political discourse will start to appear in AI as well. And I don’t know that we, as people, will have the power to resist it.

Stephen Witt

When it comes to brilliant scientists… they’re brilliant at a certain level of their knowledge. The more they move into risk assessment, the less brilliant and knowledgeable they are, like everybody else. And the more amateurish they are.

Ralph Nader

News 11/7/2025

* On Tuesday, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City Mayoral election, capping off a stunning campaign that saw him emerge from relative obscurity to defeat incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and perennial Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani campaigned on making New York City buses fast and free, opening municipal grocery stores, implementing universal childcare, and ordering the NYPD to arrest the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. Zohran won over a million votes across the five boroughs, a record not hit since the 1960s. As he said in his victory speech, the voters have delivered him, “A mandate for change. ​​A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that.”

* Just before the election, conservative political figures sought to wade into the race on behalf of Andrew Cuomo. President Donald Trump wrote, New Yorkers “really have no choice,” but to vote for Cuomo because “If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins…it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds…to my beloved first home,” per Reuters. Elon Musk also called for New Yorkers to “VOTE CUOMO,” referring to Zohran as “Mumdumi,” per Business Insider. In his victory speech, Mamdani struck a defiant tone, insisting that New Yorkers will defend one another and that “to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.” Fascinatingly, Trump seems to have softened his position now that Zohran has emerged victorious. ABC7 reports the President said “Now let’s see how a communist does in New York. We’re going to see how that works out, and we’ll help him. We’ll help him. We want New York to be successful.”

* Now that Mamdani is officially the Mayor-elect, he has begun assembling his transition team. According to POLITICO, many of these will be seasoned NYC political hands, including Former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and president of United Way of New York City, Grace Bonilla. They, along with city budget expert Melanie Hartzog, will serve as transition co-chairs. Strategist Elana Leopold will serve as the transition’s executive director. More eye-catching for outside observers is another name: former Biden Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Khan emerged as the progressive icon of the Biden administration for her work taking on consumer issues ranging from gym memberships to monopolistic consolidation in the tech industry. Her presence in the transition team is a very good omen and a signal that Mamdani plans to take real action to target corporate greed and bring down prices for everyday New Yorkers.

* Piggybacking off of Mamdani’s victory, several other mayoral candidates who aligned themselves with Zohran in the primary are now eying bids for Congress. Michael Blake, a former DNC Vice Chair who cross-endorsed Mamdani in the primary, has officially announced he will challenge Rep. Ritchie Torres in New York’s 15th Congressional district. In his announcement, Blake wrote “the people of The Bronx deserve better than Ritchie Torres,” and criticized Torres for his borderline-obsessive pro-Israel rhetoric, writing “I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a Genocide. I will focus on Affordable Housing and Books as Ritchie will only focus on AIPAC and Bibi. I will invest in the community. Ritchie invests in Bombs.” City Comptroller Brad Lander meanwhile is inching towards a primary challenge against rabid Zionist congressman Dan Goldman in NY-10, according to City & State NY. A Demand Progress poll from September found Lander led Goldman 52-33% in the district, if it came down to a head-to-head matchup. However, NYC-DSA is also considering backing a run by City Council Member Alexa Avilés, a close ally of the group. Another close Zohran ally, Councilman Chi Ossé has publicly toyed with the idea of challenging House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffres. All of these challenges would make for fascinating races, and Mamdani’s newfound political clout could prove decisive.

* Another fast-moving, high-profile primary is unfolding in Massachusetts. Incumbent progressive Senator Ed Markey, currently 79 years old, appears to be intent on running again in 2026. Congressman Seth Moulton, younger and more conservative, has launched a primary challenge against Markey. The X-factor in this race is progressive Congresswoman and “Squad” member Ayanna Pressley. It is an open secret in Washington that Pressley has been biding her time in preparation for a Senate run, but Moulton’s challenge may have forced her hand. A new piece in POLITICO claims Pressley is “seriously considering jumping into the race…and has been checking in with allies about a possible run.” Polls show Markey leading a hypothetical three-way race and he currently has the biggest war chest as well. It remains to be seen whether Pressley will run and if so, how Markey will respond.

* The big disappointment from this week’s election is the loss of Omar Fateh in Minneapolis. Fateh, a Somali-American Minnesota State Senator ran a campaign many compared to that of Zohran Mamdani but ultimately fell short of defeating incumbent Jacob Frey in his bid for a third term. Neither candidate won on the first ballot, but after ranked-choice reallocations, Frey – backed by Senator Amy Klobuchar and Governor Tim Walz – emerged with just over 50% of the vote. Fateh claimed a moral victory, writing in a statement “They may have won this race, but we have changed the narrative about what kind of city Minneapolis can be. Truly affordable housing, workers’ rights, and public safety rooted in care are no longer side conversations—they