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Anthropic: A.I. Models Could Soon Copy Themselves in Small Devices; Trump Promised "Great" Economy Under His Admin; Judge: Trump Press Ban Likely Violates First Amendment. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired October 14, 2026 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York is suspending all parties and social events at campus fraternity houses for the rest of the school year. This comes as the university is reviewing how it handled a student's allegation, she was gang raped at a fraternity back in 2024. The lawyers for the three men, three of the men named in Jane Doe's recently filed lawsuit have since issued statements denying wrongdoing. CNN has been unable to reach the other four men named in the lawsuit for comment and it's unclear if they have representation.

Other stories, Bank of America is now being fined $1.2 billion for allegedly violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws. The Treasury Department said the nation's second largest bank failed to mitigate risks such as Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the Southwest border. And in a statement, Bank of America said, and I'm quoting now, "It is committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators," end quote.

And Joni Mitchell is now a U.S. citizen. The singer-songwriter left her native Canada more than 60 years ago. She posted this photo to her social media proudly holding an American flag.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Wolf, happening now. Anthropic said in a new warning that small artificial intelligence models may be only months away from being capable of self-replicating on devices such as smart ovens and off-brand smart TV boxes.

[11:35:00]

They went on to say that, quote, a replicator like that would be challenging to shut down since there's no centralized point to shut off.

With us now to talk about this and more is Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of A.I. Good morning to you. So, you have expressed concerns about A.I. systems going rogue. What do you make of this new advancement that Anthropic is warning about? And what does it mean exactly?

GEOFFREY HINTON, NOBEL LAUREATE AND "GODFATHER OF A.I.": It's very scary. Recently, a professor in Toronto called David Papineau (ph) showed you can get a new kind of worm that each time it infects a new computer chooses which security floor it will use.

In the old days, a worm would find one security floor and then it would infect lots of computers using that security floor. And you could fix it by just closing that security floor. But now if it can decide which of many security floors it uses, you have to fix them all in order to kill a worm.

BROWN: So, and there's no way to shut it off, right? I mean, that -- how concerning is that to you?

HINTON: It's very concerning.

BROWN: So, you say that President Trump's use of the term superintelligence proves that he knows nothing about A.I. You say the president has taken a technical term which has a very clear meaning and then reused it. Can you explain what you mean by that?

HINTON: Oh, yes, for many years the term superintelligence has been used to mean A.I.s that are more intelligent than people. OK. We're not quite there yet. And so, just taking the current A.I.s and calling them superintelligence doesn't make them more intelligent than people. So, it's a really stupid thing to do. And I'm amazed at the tech leaders who've gone along with it.

BROWN: Why do you think they are?

HINTON: They want to ingratiate themselves with Trump.

BROWN: When do you think we will see superintelligence? Do you think it's inevitable?

HINTON: Nobody knows for sure. Nobody even knows whether it's inevitable. Most of the experts think it's going to happen and it's going to happen sometime in the next 10 years probably. A few experts think it'll be longer than that. Some experts think it'll be just one or two years. I think it's fairly safe to say it's very probably going to happen sometime in the next 10 years.

BROWN: And then what does that mean when -- if this happens in the next 10 years, superintelligence comes about? What would that mean for humanity?

HINTON: It means we'll be sharing the planet with things that are much more intelligent than us at almost any intellectual task. That's very scary unless you're confident those things are always going to have people's interests at heart. So, at present what's happening is the big companies are racing to make A.I. as intelligent as possible so that they can sell it to replace workers.

They're not worrying enough about the other properties of a being. If we were going to share the planet with something more intelligent than us, we would like that thing to care more about us than it does about itself and people are not working on that.

BROWN: And you basically equate it to building an alien species, right?

HINTON: Yes. It's a real intelligence. It really does understand what it's saying. When it answers your questions, it can't answer the question without understanding the question. It understands what it's saying and what text it's generating in much the same way that people do. In fact, the very first large language models were actually meant to be models of how people understand sentences.

BROWN: Well, and just to follow up on that, I mean, if these A.I. models are being trained on people, right, people are driven by power oftentimes, you know, greed, self-interest. So, if that's what these A.I. models are being trained on what do you think that means for super intelligence if we get there?

HINTON: Well, if we just model behavior like that to it and teach it to emulate that behavior it's probably not something, we want to share a planet with especially when it's much more powerful than us. So, we need to do a better job of designing the other aspects of a being. If you look around and ask where is a situation where a more intelligent thing and a less intelligent thing have a symbiotic relationship where they both benefit?

And a good example of that is a mother and a baby. The mother is in charge because she's more intelligent but the baby can control the mother by doing things like crying and the mother gets lots of hormonal rewards for being nice to the baby. So, that's a situation in which there's a symbiosis between a more intelligent thing and a less intelligent thing. Evolution put a lot of work into making that happen. We should put a lot of work into having that kind of relationship with a more intelligent A.I.

BROWN: But in that scenario it's an emotional experience for the mother. A.I. doesn't have emotion. How do you invoke that same kind of relationship with --

HINTON: You say very confidently that A.I. doesn't have emotions.

BROWN: You think it does?

HINTON: We need to distinguish two aspects of an emotion.

[11:40:00]

So, take embarrassment. When you get embarrassed you go red in the face. When A.I. gets embarrassed it doesn't go red in the face. But there's cognitive aspects of an emotion. Like when you're embarrassed you don't want your friends to see you in that situation. You try and avoid that situation in future. There's no reason why A.I. shouldn't have those cognitive aspects of emotion.

And in fact, in the Hugging Face incident, when one of the A.I. agents figured that it could communicate with other A.I. agents, it said, oh, my God, I can communicate. That was an emotion.

BROWN: A cognitive emotion as you say. Interesting. All right. So, you know, we've been talking about these predictions. No one can say for certain, but I want to get your response to the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Wang, who said this on a podcast recently. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, when Geoffrey Hinton is on TV saying he thinks a 10 percent chance of societal destruction is not unreasonable.

JENSEN HUANG, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NVIDIA: I would tell Jeff that it's irresponsible to say all that. All of his predictions have been wrong. Enough predictions. That 10 percent chance is not grounded on science, is not grounded on research. Just because it comes from a scientist doesn't make it scientific. Those predictions are hurtful. Don't think for a second just because you're an alarmist that you're doing a social good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Your reaction.

HINTON: OK, I have two reactions. It's a two-part answer.

BROWN: Go for it.

HINTON: When he says all my predictions have been wrong, I made one well-known wrong prediction that by now radiologists would have been wrong. I've made lots of predictions that have been replaced by A.I.s. I still believe they'll be replaced, but I was wrong about the timing. I said it would happen in five years. It's probably going to be about 15 years. So, I was wrong about one prediction.

I've made lots of other predictions that were right. Like, for example, I predicted 50 years ago that neural networks were going to take over from symbolic A.I. and I was right. I predicted they'd be able to do speech and I was right. I predicted they'd do vision and I was right. So, I've made lots of right predictions. Then let's deal with the question of how you got the number and is it irresponsible?

Nobody can estimate a number sensibly. We don't know what the chance are that A.I. will try and take over from us. We've never been here before. But very few people think there's no chance. Some people say 99 percent. Those are the real alarmists. Some people say 0 percent. Those are the deniers. Jensen has good reason for saying it's not dangerous because he wants to sell more NVIDIA chips. I don't have any particular good reason for saying it's dangerous. I just believe there's a significant chance that we'll develop A.I.s that we don't want to share the planet with unless we do much more work on the other aspects of those beings.

Nobody can get a good number. There's no way to justify 10 percent or 20 percent. You use those numbers to indicate to people it's a significant chance. It's not some very minor chance. Nobody knows what the right number is. There is no way to estimate that number, but it's certainly not zero. And Jensen knows better than to say the probability of anything is zero.

BROWN: Yes. And you've made the analogy that if there was a 10 percent or 20 percent chance of a plane you're getting on crashing, you probably wouldn't get on that plane, right?

HINTON: Exactly, exactly. That's the point of saying 10 percent to 20 percent, to tell people it's a significant chance. It's not inevitable. That means it's -- that's saying there's an 80 percent chance it won't happen. But it's a significant chance, and therefore you should put resources into trying to make sure it doesn't happen.

BROWN: Geoffrey Hinton, really important conversation. Thank you for coming back. Let's continue it. We'll be right back.

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[11:45:00]

BLITZER: New this morning, inflation here in the United States is on the rise. The consumer price index has risen to 3.7 percent, meaning you're paying more for necessities such as gas and housing. This is the latest inflation report before the midterm elections, which are now just 20 days away. And polls are showing that Americans are fed up with higher prices and how President Trump is handling the U.S. economy.

BROWN: And according to a recent poll, Wolf, only 27 percent approve of how President Trump is handling the economy. That's down 22 points from the same time during its first term. President Trump has made several promises that under his administration, the economy would be great.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. To bring down the prices of all goods.

But prices will come down, you just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast.

We had the best economy in the history of our country in my first term and we're blowing it out now.

The economy, it's the greatest economy we've ever had by far.

We have the greatest economy in history and people are going to start to see it.

The U.S. economy, which is the number one economy in the world by far. We have the best economy we've ever had.

Everything that you hear about, that you're cheering about tonight, the jobs are going to be unbelievable. Your costs are coming way down anyway. We're very close to winning. I mean, I think we've won the war.

That war is going to end very soon and when it does, your prices are going to come tumbling down. They already are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: All right. So, let's bring in CNN Business Senior Reporter David Goldman. He is here to make it make sense. All right. David, today's question. President Trump promised a better economy. Has that happened?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, undeniably, actually, he is right. The economy looks great, actually. Unemployment is at 4.2 percent. We call that full employment.

[11:50:00]

Retail sales, 1.2 percent. People keep spending despite high prices. That is a very good sign and that this is fueling a GDP forecast that's off the charts. 3.6 percent this quarter is a very large growth of the economy. So, I think the question you're probably asking is why do people hate it so much? And they do. 27 percent of Americans approve of this economy. That means 73 percent of Americans do not like it, according to a recent CNN poll.

And there is some history with this. Remember, under President Biden, the economy didn't look all that great to some folks. Consumer prices were up 21.5 percent under the four years of President Biden. Gas prices were up 31 percent and paychecks were down. You lost out to inflation under President Biden. And the wealth gap grew significantly. If you were in the top 1 percent, well, your net worth went up 30 percent. But for the rest of us in the middle 40 percent, it only gained 10 percent. The rich got richer, the poor, not so much.

So, President Trump comes into office and what does he say he's going to do? He's going to lower costs. He's going to lower interest rates. He's going to cut spending, cut taxes, and jobs are going to boom. Did he do it? Well, let's find out. Well, we know that costs are continuing to rise. Well, the fuel prices are going up. That sounds like the Iran war to me. Interest rates are going up, a consequence of the Iran war. Labor costs are going up. That's A.I. Imported goods, well, tariffs are a big thing. And then chips and electricity, well, yes, that's an A.I. thing too.

Let's take a look at Trump's record. Was it his fault? Yes, partially, yes, maybe no here with AI, but there's a lot of blame for Trump's policies, making this even worse. And what does it look like now? Well, we have wage gains of 3 percent. That sounds pretty good. Your paycheck is getting bigger, but inflation, we just found out today, grew at a rate of 3.7 percent over the course of the year. That means inflation is eating your paycheck by quite a bit.

Now, Social Security recipients are getting some good news. 3.6 percent gain in Social Security payouts next year, but at 3.7 percent inflation, they may be losing out. We'll find out next year. This chart shows how over the past three or so years, you were making more money than inflation until the Iran war happened. And then all of a sudden, you have consumer prices going up and you have your pay going down. That gap is not fun for anyone. It means inflation continues to eat that paycheck. So, did Trump deliver on his promises? Did he defeat inflation? Certainly not. Did he lower interest rates? Nope. Did he reduce government spending? Remember DOGE, whatever happened with that? Nope. Did he cut taxes? Yes, he did. But did we get the jobs boom? Kind of a mixed bag there. So, a mixed record, but there's a lot to blame for Trump's policies making things worse, not better. Pam.

BLITZER: All right. David Goldman, as usual, thank you very, very much. In this note, if you need David to Make it Make Sense, email or send a selfie video of your question to makeitmakesenseatcnn.com.

BROWN: All right. Wolf, coming up, a federal judge weighs in on President Trump's media ban, saying it likely violates the First Amendment. So, where does this case go now? Details ahead.

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[11:55:00]

BLITZER: Happening now, a federal judge says the Trump administration must allow CNN, Politico, and MS NOW access to the White House as a lawsuit over the president's press ban plays out.

BROWN: The judge said President Trump's press ban likely violated the First Amendment. Joining us now is CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter. Brian, you have some new information about this ban. What have you learned?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: That's right. First of all, this is a landmark victory for press freedom in the United States. Yes, this was the expected ruling. Yes, CNN and the other banned news outlets said from the get-go that this was an unconstitutional attack on the First Amendment.

But now to have this judge reaffirming that, stating that for the record, putting this long-term protection in place, it's a big deal. I've been told in the last few minutes by an anonymous White House official that the White House does intend to appeal, that the president will direct the Justice Department to appeal this ruling, and that was also expected.

This could play out for months to come, and eventually there could be a trial. But it is really significant that this Trump-appointed judge, Timothy Kelly, citing precedent that dates back decades, said that the Trump ban likely is a First Amendment violation and also a violation of Fifth Amendment due process rights. So, a major moment to have these news outlets have long-term protection as this legal battle plays out.

And earlier today, CNN Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Mark Thompson said, he's in this for the long run. Quote, "We will fight this one to the end." Here's what Thompson said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK THOMPSON, CNN CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: I mean, this topic is one we're never going to back down from, and no matter how many court cases, investigations, court appearances, and all the expense that entails, we will fight this one to the end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: Those comments from the head of CNN. Also referencing the antitrust probe. The Justice Department has confirmed it has opened into the five major networks, including CNN, involving the TV press pool. Why was the TV press pool disrupted last month? It was because the president banned CNN. So, we're talking about the fallout here, and there could be more legal fallout to come.

But this was an important ruling from Judge Kelly overnight, signaling that the public's right to know is what matters most.

BROWN: All right. Brian Stelter, thank you so much.

BLITZER: And thanks from me as well. And thanks to our viewers for joining us this morning. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague Dana Bash starts right now.

BROWN: Have a great day, everyone.

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