Former U.S. President Donald Trump shared a mix of thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) on YouTuber Logan Paul’s podcast “Impaulsive”.
With just some five months to go before the U.S. 2024 elections, the Trump media campaign appears to be in full swing, as the presidential hopeful believes deepfakes could pose a nuclear-level threat to the world.
In his hour-long appearance on Impaulsive, Trump discussed myriad topics, ranging from Joe Biden and Elon Musk, to Russia, Gaza, and even Aliens.
On the topic of AI, Trump described the technology as a “superpower” with “alarming” capabilities. He went on to espouse concerns that an AI deepfake of him could cause a nuclear war.
Trump shared that he had seen a deepfake video of himself promoting a product where he could not tell if it was fake or real. He says it was “absolutely perfect, and that’s scary. In particular in one way, if you’re the President of the United States”.
He then goes on to describe a hypothetical scenario where a deepfake video of him says “[…]we have just sent thirteen nuclear missiles…and they will hit their targets in 12 minutes and 59 seconds”. He posits that this could cause another nuclear-equipped country to retaliate, even though it was fake.
Trump said he asked Elon Musk if there would be any way for the hypothetical country to check the authenticity of such a video, to which Musk said there was “no way”.
Without realizing the irony of the next series of statements, Trump admitted he had used AI to rewrite one of his speeches.
“One of the top people, he said, ‘Oh, you’re going to make a speech?’ ‘Yeah.’ He goes, click, click, click, and like 15 seconds later, he shows me my speech, written so beautifully. I said, ‘I’m going to use this sucker.”
Though he is concerned that a deepfake could lead to global nuclear armageddon, he’s not opposed to having speeches – that are already written for him – rewritten by a machine.
Trump was surprised by how fast the AI wrote up his speech noting that the industry of “wonderful speech writers” will soon be gone as a result.
In recent months, Trump has become a staunch advocate for Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies in general. Seemingly, Trump is looking to capitalize on voters’ frustrations with the Biden administration’s lackluster approach to crypto policies and regulations.
Vowing to “[…]end Joe Biden’s War on crypto”, the former president recently declared that he wanted all Bitcoin to be mined in America. This came following a meeting with the country’s top Bitcoin miners.
It appears that crypto is now a major voting issue in America. This can be seen in the many criticisms that have been levied against the Biden administration. Furthermore, it has prompted the Biden campaign to rethink its approach on the campaign trail.
Despite being convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records and having dozens of charges across three other indictments, Trump appears to be moving on with the election campaign as if nothing happened.