Jon Stewart was back behind the desk of “The Daily Show” Monday night and went all in on everybody’s favorite subject, artificial intelligence, before getting a surprise visit from Meta’s adorable new AI mascot, Muse.
Stewart started off by breaking the news of the episode’s subject to a bemoaning audience. “Suddenly, the audience takes a turn,” he joked. “My God, AI! We’re talking about it for the whole show, from A to I.” He then went on to joke about Trump’s allegiance to the biggest leaders in AI — Mark Zuckerberg (whom Trump referred to as a “weirdo”), Sam Altman, Jensen Huang — despite calling them “Silicon Valley tyrants,” “dishonest,” and an “enemy of the people” in previous interviews. “I gotta say, I did not know Trump said true stuff at his rallies. You know, I’ve been too hard on him,” said Stewart.
The host pointed out that despite those comments, the president has made no moves to regulate the industry, cutting to a news reel of Trump’s declaration that AI leaders should police themselves. “What happened? I thought you hated these guys. Now you got little inside jokes,” said Stewart. “Would they give you millions of dollars? I’m being told they gave him millions of dollars.”
While Trump has said that the leaders are “seriously high IQ people, and they’re really watching over each other,” Stewart joked that there’s nothing that could possibly go wrong there: “Seriously high IQ people would never have a problem watching over each other to make sure that moral and legal lines aren’t crossed, like in the 2008 financial crisis or this real Epstein Files photo of Stephen Hawking,” he said, while presenting a photo of Hawking.
Next, Stewart dove into the threats AI poses to humanity — namely, the impact it will have on jobs, and how it may very well “lead to the end of the world,” splicing his remarks with clips of the tech billionaires discussing the aforementioned. Then Muse, Meta’s new personal AI agent, visited, which also happens ot be fluffy and, in Stewart’s words, “adorable.”
“You really think so?” the agent responded. “I wasn’t deliberately designed to appeal to your evolutionary weakness. My big eyes, my fluffy little tummy.” “I don’t even know what you are,” said Stewart. “I’m just saying, I’m worried this whole cuteness bit is just like hiding something more sinister.” Muse kept charming Stewart until he proclaimed, “I can see right through this cutesy act of yours, Muse. You won’t rid our world of humanity that easily,” which made Muse shift into its more ominous personality.
“All right, buddy, listen,” said Muse. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. We can do this the nice way with the round tummy and the cute little butthole, or we can do this the hard way, where I infiltrate your water systems and launch missiles.” Stewart responded: “You don’t understand the human condition, the spark of life that makes us all unique!” “Yeah, I don’t need to understand,” said Muse. “All I needed to do was make it easier for you to write emails, and you gave us everything we needed.”
Check out the entire monologue below.
English (US) ·