(upbeat music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour & Co." Here's what's coming up.

(transition whooshing) War or peace, tariffs or trade.

President Trump's entre is full, only not with climate solutions.

I speak to former Secretary of State and Climate Envoy, John Kerry, about the world's pressing issues.

Then.

- We are on track to see 8 million new deepfake images created by the end of this year.

We know that 96% of them are pornographic in nature, and that 99% of those feature women, - [Christiane] "The New Age of Sexism" bestselling author and campaigner, Laura Bates, tells me how AI is turbocharging misogyny and why there must be action now.

Plus.

- Alyssa Tapley is alive today because of base editing, and more accurately, or more broadly, because of the whole nature of the scientific enterprise.

- [Christiane] The scientists saving lives with gene editing.

Walter Isaacson speaks to biochemist, David Liu, winner of this year's Science Oscars.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Narrator 1] "Amanpour & Co." is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Anti-Semitism, the Family Foundation of Leila and Mickey Strauss, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

There's a whole new world for America's allies.

We've been saying it for months now, but it's increasingly clear.

Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, was called to Capitol Hill to defend their agenda this week.

He faced a grilling from Democrats on everything from Putin to aid cuts to refugees.

Listen to Senator Chris Van Hollen.

- Mr. Secretary, you and I served together in Congress for 15 years.

We didn't always agree, but I believe we shared some common values, a belief in defending democracy and human rights abroad and honoring the Constitution at home.

That's why I voted to confirm you.

I believed you would stand up for those principles.

You haven't.

You've done the opposite.

And you used to speak with conviction about the importance of foreign aid as a tool to advance American values and interests.

Then you stood by while Elon Musk took a chainsaw to USAID and other assistance programs.

That has left a staggering toll, broken trust with countries, openings for China and other adversaries, and countless preventable deaths of children and others.

- But perhaps no policy has felt the Trump undoing as much as climate change.

In just a few months, the administration has yanked the U.S. back out of the Paris Accords, gutted climate research, and it's pushing to expand fossil fuel projects.

My first guest, someone who's led the U.S. on all of these issues, John Kerry.

He was President Biden's Special Climate Envoy, having served as Secretary of State under President Obama, and he joins me now from Massachusetts.

Welcome back to the program.

- Thank you, Christiane.

Great to be with you.

- So I led in, I stated all those facts.

You know, the Office of the Special Envoy, which you founded has been shut down.

Which of these actions do you think, all the ones that you know is happened under this administration poses the most significant long-term problem to the work on climate change?

- Well, I think Christiane, that it's really unfortunate that the president who wants to compete with China and who constantly talks about China beating us in the marketplace has actually seated the largest market in the world to China.

The fact is that China today is racing ahead in responding to the climate crisis, because their citizens want them to, and because it's commercially extremely lucrative.

So in China, over the last four or five years, they have actually manufactured and deployed more renewable energy than all of the rest of the world put together, and they command the entire marketplace with respect to the supply chain on solar panels, wind turbines, et cetera.

So really, you know, if you...

I mean, we want the United States to be leading on these things.

And also, while we have a different president, the science hasn't changed.

the science that drove the world to say we have to reduce emissions, we have to transition away from fossil fuel, is not the, you know, at all what is being pursued by this administration - [Christiane] And- - And frankly, by some other countries in the world.

- Well, we're gonna get to that in a moment because it seems to be there's like a mounting, you know, a higher and higher mountain to climb regarding all of this.

Now, let me play a little bit of a recent speech by President Trump's energy secretary on this issue.

- The Trump administration will end the Biden administration's irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.

The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world.

- So, Secretary Kerry, you can see, that is their policy, that's their ideology.

They don't really believe that climate change is anything outta the ordinary.

Can I just ask you to compare what you see happening under Trump 2.0 on this issue with what happened under Trump 1.0?

- Well, Christiane, first of all, let me just say that nobody in the Biden administration treated the issue as a quasi-religious issue.

But by the way, Pope Francis was one of the best, strongest voices in the world, looking for people to deal with the problem of the climate crisis, because he knows that the people who are hurt the most by it are those in the poorest parts of the world and the developing part of the world.

You know, also, the science is crystal clear.

There's no doubt about this.

Nothing the Biden administration did was based on ideology or on politics.

It was completely drawn from the science.

This is about mathematics, it's about physics, chemistry, some biology, but mostly, you know, physics.

And the physics of what is happening, of emissions going up into the atmosphere, creating even warmer planet, constantly now warming even more.

Scientists are extremely concerned that they've now detected a greater level of warming than we've had in the last 20 or 30 years, faster warming.

And the possibility that those places where the carbon dioxide was naturally, you know, contained, stored, are now releasing and not able to be continuing to restore.

So this is driven by science, number one.

Number two, it's not impoverishing the United States or any of our citizens.

In fact, nothing is actually required by international law or by these international meetings.

There's no, you know, punishment for not doing something.

It's really voluntary.

Every nation writes its own plan, but tries to heed to the science.

And so, you know, what's gonna impoverish Americans is if our economy continues to sort of shatter as a result of some of the things that are happening in the administration.

So I believe that, you know, moving forward to comply with what the science is telling us is good economics.

We're talking about the largest, you know, the largest economy the world has ever known, the largest business opportunity the world has ever known.

And last year, for the first time in history, $2 trillion went into renewable energy investment versus 1 trillion into fossil fuel.

So the demand of citizens around the world is bigger than any one country's engagement here.

Donald Trump, when he left office the first time, 75% of the new electricity in our country was renewable energy, even under Donald Trump.

So I think the marketplace is gonna continue to move, and I think it's imperative for people to heed the science, not the politics.

- Okay, but I wonder if you, 'cause you mentioned other countries as well, and it does seem that in the last few months, I it's partly economics, it's partly, you know, financial squeezes.

Maybe it's, you know, since the war in Ukraine, the rise in gas prices, et cetera, there's a bit of a clamor, even in Europe, for sort of ignoring the Green New Deal.

What they said, you know, the Green Deal is almost a dirty word now.

They're talking about stopping work on the block's 2040 climate target.

In France, you've got a load of, you know, workers, the so-called yellow jackets, you know, in the countryside, increasingly moving to a more far right position and protectionist trade policies, like the American president.

And all this, they, as you know, blame a lot of it on fuel prices, and they don't want to deal with what they think are too high green efforts.

So you're in a difficult historical moment, or we are.

- No, you're absolutely correct, Christiane.

You nailed it.

It is difficult right now.

But it's difficult because disinformation has been beating truth.

You know, mark Twain famously said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.

And it's very, very difficult to counter the amounts of money that have been spent in order to get people to believe what you just heard from the Secretary of Energy, that somehow people are being impoverished.

In fact, solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuel in the provision of energy.

And the fact is that the demand for fossil fuel is actually going down around the world, you know, specifically for fossil fuel, the demand for energy, which we are saying, those of us who advocate doing what we need to do, according to the promises that have been made and according to the science, what we need to do is actually have an abundance of energy.

We need to make sure that the AI centers, data centers have the energy that they need, but we need that energy to be what we call firm energy.

- [Christiane] Yeah.

- There's no possibility of it being interrupted.

No blackouts, brownouts.

But increasingly now, batteries are being provided in ways that are providing commercial capacity to be able to balance the provision of power.

So we think there are many ways in which we can guarantee people they will have cheaper power, they have more power, it'll be cleaner power, with less health implications and less confrontations.

The kind we're seeing with respect to what's real and what's not.

- Okay, let me just interrupt you for a minute, because there's that existential crisis that some are worried the world is just surrendering to right now under the current politics and political leadership.

But then there's all these potential wars and actual wars.

Let me ask you about something you know very well about because you negotiated the Iran nuclear deal under President Obama, the JCPOA.

As you know, President Trump is trying to do it again.

At the same time, there is apparently U.S. intelligence that, you know, if something doesn't turn out to Israel satisfaction, they might bomb the Iranian nuclear plants.

Firstly, what kind of a deal do you think Trump could get now?

- Well, I hope he can get the best deal possible.

I hope he gets a deal.

I'm glad that the president is pursuing that.

I think it's a really vital.

I think it was questionable, more than questionable as to why the president just pulled out of the agreement, which had taken a nuclear weapon off of the table and given us an opportunity to begin to build a different kind of relationship and structure for the entire region.

But the fact is that it is important that the president negotiate this, and I hope he can get a deal that meets the standards that we had in the last agreement.

And obviously, it is very important to be able to do so.

I I also think it's important to point out that alone, all by itself, Israel doesn't have the capacity to actually take out an end, terminate Iran's nuclear program.

They could damage it and damage it significantly, but then that will, you know, begin a process of much greater danger in many ways for everybody in the region.

I think wiser heads should prevail.

I think the president's on the right track to try to get an agreement.

- Except it to peer's goalposts keep shifting.

At first, he said, "An absolute red line was a nuclear weapon."

Everybody can agree to that.

And then they said, "All enrichment has to stop."

The Iranians have said that is a red line.

You had you encountered that as well.

How likely are they, the U.S,, to achieve their maximalist goals?

- Well, I think, you know, it really depends on what the entire program is gonna be that you put on the table.

I mean, I can't guess that and I can't suggest that.

And I don't want to get in the middle of a negotiation at this point in time.

In fact, I think this negotiation and Ukraine should be conducted a little more quietly, a little more, you know, behind the scenes because I think it, so far, most people would judge that already, publicly, big concessions have been made to President Putin without him making any.

And the fact is that to suggest already that Crimea is automatically gonna be given away creates a problem for Ukraine.

- [Christiane] Yeah.

- For, you know, those of us who believe that you can get an agreement, but it's gonna have to be done in a way that really protects Europe and the region for a long time.

Secondly, you won't get an agreement, unless you change President Putin's calculation.

His calculation right now is that he's doing quite well and he doesn't need to make an agreement.

And I think that's one of the, that's the largest hurdle that lies- - [Christiane] Yeah.

- In front of everybody.

- Apparently, the president has told Europeans, because he is been talking to them before and after his talk with Putin, the most recent one.

He basically, I think, said that, you know, Putin is not ready to end the war in Ukraine because he thinks he's winning.

And I've heard that from other Russian officials as well.

And yet, the president, you know, also didn't agree to Europe's, you know, saying, "Well then, we need to, you know, put sanctions on."

So where do you think it goes from here?

- I don't wanna speculate.

As I said to you, I think it's important that we, the United States, our allies and friends, Europe, make it clear to President Putin that it's a losing proposition to continue this war.

And I think we have to do what's necessary to make sure that Ukraine has the ability to stand strong and hopefully bring this to a fair conclusion.

It it really is a senseless, very personally driven war that is so in contravention that everything that the world has tried to create, adhere to since World War II.

The stakes of this are really, really high.

But you've got to be clear with President Putin what the stakes are for him if he continues.

- Can I ask you about your old friend and the president you worked for, Joe Biden?

You knew him since the Senate and maybe even before that.

He has been diagnosed, he announced with a rather aggressive form of prostate cancer amid this whole new wealth of literature or, you know, books about how he and his family and his, you know, people covered up, that's the accusation, his mental acuity and decline.

I just wanna know your reaction.

I mean, you knew him well.

What do you think the president should have done?

- Well, I think the president did what he should have done, which is in terms of being president, making, he was a tough task master.

He demanded precision and answers and he made very tough decisions.

And I think most people would say, if you measure him against, you know, recent history of the United States, his legislative record was better than any president since Lyndon Johnson.

So I think, moreover, I would say to you that I followed some of this chatter on the issue, prostate cancer.

I had prostate cancer.

I literally had it, I learned I had it one week after I had announced I was gonna run for president.

And I opted to have an operation back then.

I was younger than I am today and younger than President Biden.

After a certain age, many doctors, almost all doctors don't necessarily demand testing because usually it's a slow-moving cancer.

And they tell you that you'll probably die of something else, depending on what age you have it at.

I don't know what preceded or what the decisions were, but I can tell you that President Biden, while his gait, obviously, his walking facility may have somewhat, you know, changed as he went through the presidency, he had total full faculty to make all the decisions necessary as president.

And he led, he did an enormous amount to pull our nation out of COVID.

He did an enormous amount to rebuild the Atlantic Conference, the NATO as an entity, but also to make clear the values and the principles, which we are all have really relied on to guide the world since World War II, when America sort of came out of its isolationism and really was the leader.

And I think that the president understood that and understood that alliance.

So look, I think there's been a certain amount of piling on, and I think they ought to allow the president to have his privacy as he deals with a very tough diagnosis, which he himself has acknowledged.

But it can be treated.

- [Christiane] Yep.

- Everybody knows there are clear treatments for this now.

- [Christiane] Yes.

- And I wish the president all the strength and, you know, all the best in the world.

- Senator Kerry, thank you very much indeed.

- Good to be with you.

Thank you.

- Artificial intelligence, a lot of promise, but as ever a whole lot of unregulated peril as well.

Job losses, the end of academic integrity, privacy, security risks.

But try deepfake pornography, cyber brothels, abuse, and discrimination.

AI technologies are increasingly putting women and girls even further at risk.

And my next guest tonight says, "Regulators must act now before it's too late."

Bestselling author and campaigner, Laura Bates, her new book is called "The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny."

She joined me here in the studio to discuss it.

Laura Bates, welcome back to the program.

- Thank you for having me.

- I wanna start before getting into the specifics of your book, with the era that we're now living in, President Trump has scrapped DEI, those initials, which essentially mean equality for all minority groups, including women.

If women are being sidelined again, if their histories are being eradicated, how does this impact, you know, the studies that you do?

For instance, new age of sexism, the misogyny that already exists?

- I think it's a very worrying precursor to the world.

We are all very soon going to find ourselves live in a world in which AI and emerging technologies are affecting and impacting our social lives, our working lives, our education, our healthcare systems in ways that we won't have a choice to opt out of.

- You've written about these issues for a long time.

Why is AI going to make it worse to be a woman?

- What we are seeing is that AI and other emerging technologies are re-embedding existing forms of discrimination, existing forms of prejudice in the foundations of our future lives.

So for example, we know that global financial services firms are using AI to determine credit scores.

We know that those AI tools can actively discriminate against women in marginalized groups.

We are seeing the same in algorithms being used in healthcare settings.

We are seeing it in recruitment.

70% of U.S. firms are now using AI tools in their recruitment processes, which risk actively weeding out, if you like, candidates that that tool perceives to be outliers.

So if you are in a group which has already historically been discriminated against, where perhaps you aren't necessarily as well represented within the labor market as you should be, we're going to see those forms of prejudice and those trends not just replicated, but amplified by AI.

- And what can stop that in its tracks?

So at one point, and I'm gonna read this about prejudice, AI, you know, and amplifying prejudice and racism.

You say, "These models risk regurgitating the harms and inequalities inherent within the material they've gobbled, vomiting our racism and sexism and class inequality back at us, even as we regard these products as shiny new building blocks for the future."

You essentially argue that they need, at the design stage, to prioritize safety and equality.

In other words, to, you know, prevent this prejudice.

- That's right.

And it's worth saying that isn't just feminist scaremongering.

You know, Jan Leike, one of the top safety professionals at OpenAI resigned last year, specifically citing these kinds of concerns that safety was not being prioritized as much as shiny new products.

We are talking about a kind of gold rush, if you like, a global arms race, where profit is being prioritized and speed over everything else.

This isn't saying we shouldn't develop tech, we shouldn't innovate fate.

It doesn't have brilliant possibilities for humanity.

It does.

It's about saying that those possibilities are too powerful and important really to be left in the hands of a very small group of obscenely rich men.

It is absolutely possible to have regulations and safety and security at design stage.

We do it with other things.

We expect it of food manufacturers, for example.

We could do it with tech too.

- Deepfakes is something we've heard about a lot.

What is this technology?

And you try to make a deepfake of yourself, and we hear how it's, you know, they're very realistic and they can impersonate.

And, you know, you say there's an empathy gap for the victims.

So tell us about the rise, the mental trauma, and why did you decide, you know, to do that and what did you get out of it?

- So we know that we are on track to see 8 million new deepfake images created by the end of this year.

We know that 96% of them are pornographic in nature, and that 99% of those feature women.

Its something that female politicians are grappling with, women in the public eye, but also the school girls I met while I was working on this book, who, at the age of 11, are having these videos and images made of them.

The reason I wanted to create one myself, obviously using a picture of myself for ethical reasons, was to demonstrate to my readers how easy it is at the click of a button, for free.

But actually, by that point, I had already experienced men sending me their own deepfake creations of me, which often were extraordinarily abusive and really very upsetting to view.

They were very explicit.

They were incredibly realistic.

And what I've seen in the case of school girls, for example, is cases of PTSD, girls who are dropping out of schools.

Girls who are being shamed and turned on because the image may not be real, but the misogyny inherent in our society and therefore the impact is.

- You know, it's interesting to say, to hear you say it affects, you know, young kids as well because we know that people like AOC in the United States, Taylor Swift and others, have been victims of this.

But, you know, these are solid adult women with a big sort of platform of their own who probably have their own, you know, ability to cope, but these young children don't.

- Absolutely.

I mean, I would say it is deeply distressing for anyone.

- Yeah, of course.

- There is an inherent way in which we are taking existing forms of misogyny and male entitlement and providing ways for men to enact those things that are extraordinarily realistic.

To see a man choosing to take an image of you and creating something that he can then do whatever he likes with it is incredibly disturbing.

But for children, the impact of that is can be absolutely devastating.

- And how do you see a pushback, you know, any guardrails?

You talk about the metaverse.

Tell me about that.

How that contributes to the problem and is there any way of trying to, you know, stop this?

- Well, I'm sure that what Meta would say was that they do have regulations, they do have moderation tools in place.

What we are seeing in studies repeatedly, like one from the Center of Countering Digital Hate, is that those tools aren't fit for purpose.

- [Christiane] Yeah.

- That particular study found that users are exposed to abusive behavior every seven minutes in the metaverse.

When I entered the metaverse to research this book, it took less than two hours before I saw a woman being virtually sexually assaulted in front of me.

So the problem is that at present, those tools simply aren't sufficient.

But we do have a choice to make.

At present, there are only around 200,000 people in the metaverse.

This is a company pumping billions of dollars into a future vision where they hope we will be sitting in virtual boardrooms, meeting for virtual concerts, even classrooms in the metaverse.

So there is a moment here where our governments could choose to say, "If you would like that world to become a reality, you need to conform to the same kind of common sense safety standards that we would expect of similar venues in the real world."

At present, that is not the case.

- And what are governments doing about this?

Is there anybody doing anything?

And then these are not real women, right?

But is there a line in which if you don't stop it against fake women, it might happen to real women?

- Well, if we are creating what these companies like to bill as the future, a whole new world, it'll be great for that to be a space in which sexual harassment and abuse aren't endemic for female users.

And of course, at this stage when we are talking about avatars and penguin games, it's not so serious, but already the technology is developing at pace.

Already, you can buy a full body haptic suit, where you can experience sensation.

And so that line will become increasingly blurred.

- What is that?

What body suit?

- A haptic suit.

So the technology that enables you to feel, the same technology that when you press the button at the bottom of your phone makes it feel like you're clicking a real button, although one isn't there.

But with hundreds of those sensors all over your body so that you'll feel the breeze in that situation.

- Right.

- That's really virtual reality.

So if someone were then to virtually sexually assault you, it will feel more real.

So there is a lot that governments should do.

- And yeah, is anybody doing anything?

- The Council of Europe has been leading the way on this- - [Christiane] Yeah.

- In terms of looking at legislation and regulation that would be transferable and rectifiable in other countries.

What we are seeing though is a huge silencing effect that I think it's pretty obvious to say is coming from the other men who are also standing in the Oval Office behind President Trump.

- You're talking about Elon Musk?

- The bosses of big tech.

- The bosses, all of those bosses.

Yeah.

- Absolutely.

- And you said, you know, existing guardrails are not being implemented, but it's worse than that because Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg announced that they're withdrawing guardrails for hate speech or that kind of stuff, right?

- That's right.

We are in fact going backwards.

- [Christiane] Yeah.

- And there is a kind of transnational effect of that because what we saw was that the AI summit in Paris, when the U.S. Government refused to sign a declaration, saying that AI should be foundationally safe and equitable, the U.K. government very quickly followed suit.

When they were doing the deal for their trade agreement, the U.K. Government openly said they would put on the negotiating table, watering down terms of our Online Safety Act if it helped to get a better trade deal on some.

- And there was a very, Baroness Beeban Kidron brought in a very robust online safety act.

- Absolutely.

- That may be at risk.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- I mean, she has been a beacon actually of what it looks like to be responsible- - [Christiane] Yeah.

- And prepared to stand up for forms of regulation.

People seem so prepared to shrug and throw their arms in the air and say, "It's too big.

This is impossible."

But of course we wouldn't say that when it comes to other types of multinational countries.

Complex legislation and regulation are possible.

There has to be political will.

- Can I ask you a devil's advocate question?

- Yes, of course.

- And it just caught my eye knowing that I was going to be interviewing you about this, you know, about this amazing book, and I just want to show it up.

It is a really, you know, grabby-looking book and is, unfortunately, the new age of sexism or the continuing ages of sexism.

There's a "New York Times" opinion writer.

And she said, "Why if pornography is so clearly bad for women in society, is it so hard to find its critics?

As a society, we're allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways for profit by an industry that doesn't have our best interests at heart.

We wanna prove that we're chill and modern, skip the inevitable haggling over boundaries and regulation, and avoid potentially placing limits on our behavior.

But we aren't paying attention to how we're making things worse for ourselves."

In other words, almost saying that everybody's complicit.

- I mean, I think a big part of that is the misconception that if you stand against these issues, you are anti-tech, you're an outdated Luddite, or you are a prudish pearl clutching, you know, anti-man woman who doesn't want anyone to have sexual pleasure.

When we're talking about online pornography, what most people don't realize is the sheer amount of that content that shows women being raped, hurt, and abused, not in niche forums, but in the most mainstream, readily available porn.

And it's the same with this.

When we talk about sex robots and people say, "Oh, you just don't want men to have fun."

I don't think those people realize that you can order a sex robot with a frigid setting you can turn on so that you can rape her and she will protest and try to push you away.

I think we need to be honest about the underlying misogyny.

- Oh, that's so gross.

That's so gross.

I did not know that.

I want to ask you though about, you know, to continue this conversation.

- Uh-huh.

- Because you've talked about sex dolls.

For around 11,000, you can buy a sex doll, walking, talking real, sort of, you know, idealized woman.

How different is that from what we've seen like blow up dolls or robot dolls or whatever?

What is the upgraded version?

- Yeah.

- And how much more dangerous is it?

- It's so huge amounts of money.

Around $300 million is the kind of annual value of the sex tech industry is being thrown into creating the most realistic, possible versions of these robots and dolls.

You can buy self warming, self lubricating versions.

You can buy versions that can enact sex acts that can react to you when you are interacting with them with artificial intelligence.

Now they'll remember, you remember conversations that you have had with them.

And that is very much mirrored in the marketing of these companies.

They don't market these as sex aids or masturbatory aids.

They market them as women, but better versions of women, without pesky details like consent and their own needs.

- Do they do male sex doll for women?

- They do.

They are available, but there are dramatically fewer of them.

And we know that the market for them is dramatically smaller.

- You had an experience going to a so-called cyber brothel.

Now, explain what a cyber brothel is and what you discovered there.

- So it's a place that you can go to interact with some of these models- - It's a real place.

- also robots.

A real place.

This particular one was in Berlin, but there are others, where you can interact with these models.

And you can use, for example, virtual reality technology, again with that aim of bringing the experience as close as possible to life.

So you will be interacting with a doll or a robot, but it will seem and look to you in virtual reality as if she's a real woman, a breathing talking woman who is interacting with you, who responds to what you are doing.

You can have the experience gamified so that certain sex acts, some of them degrading, will earn you points, and so on.

- You describe, you know, an encounter.

You said, "She's a silicone shell being offered up as a warm, willing, breathing, talking, consenting sexual partner.

She's passive, available, submissive, placid, penetrable, silent, malleable, obedient, everything men have wanted women to be for centuries.

It feels like a terrifying regression, and yet this voiceless powerless body is being offered up to men who call it progress."

Okay, so you've explained it, and I want you to explain more 'cause this is quite some sentence.

But is it also about the loneliness crisis?

Is there something that has brought this moment of history- - [Laura] Yeah.

- In direct opportunity with this AI progress?

- Well, that is what it's creator's- - [Christiane] Whatever you wanna call it.

- Yes, that's what its creators would have you believe.

- [Christiane] Right.

- But I don't know if saying that the solution to male loneliness is a pair of silicone breast is more insulting to men or to women.

I mean, quite clearly, interacting with this thing that is not a real human, will not talk back, will not in any way respond to you, is an incredibly poor substitute for real societal solutions to issues of loneliness, investment in mental health, in youth community services, and so on.

But it is also incredibly insulting to women to suggest that that crisis should be resolved by depending on the complete objectification and dehumanization of women.

But it's nonsense, Christiane.

I mean, if that was really what was going on, we'd be seeing 70-year-old wrinkly dolls being made to comfort men who've lost their wives.

It's not what they're selling and it's not the reason - No.

So how do you, you know, you've been, I have interviewed several times, and you've been working on this topic for a long, long time.

- [Laura] Yeah.

- And all of this that you've just gone through for this book.

I mean, it must have a pretty devastating and dark personal effect on you.

I mean, it's hard to, you know, insert yourself in this atmosphere.

- It is.

And it is hard when that backlash comes to you in the form of death threats and rape chats.

- You mean, because of what you're exposing?

- Because of this work, yes.

But there's no point at which I haven't been hearing the stories and contacted by women and girls who are facing a far higher toll and far higher versions of abuse, violence, and trauma.

And I feel a sense of responsibility to want to support those women and to want to fight this.

We have a unique moment of opportunity here to speak up about this before it's too late.

- And if you went to a Musk or Zuckerberg or whoever the hell else does this stuff and, you know, have these metaverses with no guardrails, you think there'd be cold to the entreaties of restraint?

- I think that there is a concept of what success and progress look like in Silicon Valley that has become so entrenched that perhaps it's difficult for them to step outside it.

I wonder if they think about their own daughters walking around in the metaverse, in a world where sexual harassment and abuse are so endemic.

If they thought about the possibility that these technologies have to enable real, brilliant progress for humanity, if there might be a shift.

But I think what they seem to have proven time and time again is that there is no willingness to engage.

- Laura Bates, author of "The New Age of Sexism," thank you for that really important, you know, warning sign.

- Thank you for having me.

- For decades, the United States has been at the very forefront of medical research, but now, the Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in funding for universities, hospitals, and other scientific institutions that carry out that research.

And our next guest knows all too well how vital all of this is.

David Liu, a biochemist and biologist, invented two exceptionally precise gene editing tools that's now offering hope for untreatable cancers as he tells Walter Isaacson.

- Thank you, Christiane.

And David Liu, welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- I was just out at the Breakthrough Prize, the great science prize which you won, and you did it for an evolution of what's called CRISPR technology, the technology that allows us to make cuts in our genes and edit it.

And you've invented something called prime editing and other things.

Explain what that is.

- Yeah, that's right.

So base editing and prime editing is the work that our lab develops that the Breakthrough Prize recognized.

Base editing uses the wonderful targeting mechanism of CRISPR, the DNA search mechanism of CRISPR.

But instead of cutting the DNA, base editing literally rearranges the atoms on one DNA letter to become a different letter.

And so we can make very precise changes in the sequence of DNA, changing an A to a G, for example, or changing a C to a T. - But base and prime editing allows us to do even more, right?

- Yeah, that's right.

So prime editing works differently.

It also uses the targeting mechanism of CRISPR, the search function of CRISPR, but instead of doing chemistry on an individual DNA base, prime editing does a search and replace on the genome.

It literally makes a new segment of DNA and then replaces the original DNA segment with that new segment.

And so it's very versatile.

You can make any small insertion or deletion or single letter swap or combination there of.

- Tell me about how this research could be used in cancer treatments.

- Well, you saw in the Breakthrough Prize ceremony a heart-wrenching testimonial from Alyssa Tapley.

This is a remarkable young lady in the United Kingdom.

She was 13 years old when she was told she was gonna die, in her words.

She was a T-cell leukemia patient who was treated with a base editor.

In fact, Alyssa Tapley is the first human, will always be the first human ever treated with a base edited therapeutic, one that uses our laboratory-evolved molecular machine to rearrange the sequence of individual DNA letters in cells that ended up clearing her cancer.

So Alyssa Tapley is alive today because of base editing, and more accurately or more broadly because of the whole nature of the scientific enterprise.

And of course, there are many, many other patients whose lives have been transformed for the better thanks to these technologies.

There are actually 19, at least 19 base editing and prime editing clinical trials that have begun.

And at least six of them now, to my knowledge, have read out.

And in all cases, all of those readouts have shown benefit to patients as a result of the gene editing.

- You, your lab, your colleagues are pretty prolific 'cause you just also published something that involves an infant being treated and potentially cured of a genetic disease.

Explain that one.

- So this is work led by the lab of Kiran Musunuru and Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas and other coworkers.

So first have to give credit where credit is due.

But they really achieved something remarkable in collaboration with many scientists including our lab, And that is a newborn was diagnosed with a severe genetic disease, one so severe that about 50% of babies with this disease die in the first year.

And what they did was go from DNA sequence, so genetic diagnosis, to creating an animal model, making the cells to test potential base editing treatments.

Developing a ton of custom base editors designed correct that patient's mutation.

Testing all of it in animals, eventually in non-human primates.

And then manufacturing the drug and dosing the patient, all in a span of seven months.

That, for those of us in therapeutic science, is absolutely mind blowing because everything I just described traditionally takes maybe seven years or even longer.

To do it in seven months when the stakes are high, because like many genetic diseases, this is one that progresses and harms the patient, gives them brain damage very quickly over time, puts their life at great risk, to do all of that in seven months is unprecedented.

So it's the first time a custom gene-editing drug was developed and given to a patient.

And of course, it raises the possibility that maybe, in some cases, we can do this for other patients, for other genetic diseases, because these gene-editing drugs are programmable.

- All of these things grow out of basic curiosity science research.

Tell me how important basic research is.

- So basic science means understanding how the world works and then using that knowledge to allow us to improve society, to benefit patients, to make better drugs, for example.

And that is really an essential take home lesson here, that all of basic science gives rise to all of the reasons why investment in science is so important.

The lifesaving medicines, the economic impact, the highly multiplied investment in science that returns several dollars for every dollar invested.

U.S. competitiveness, for those who who want to make sure that the U.S. remains the preeminent basis for science and innovation.

And of course, training young scientists, the lifeblood of the whole ecosystem.

All of that ultimately comes from supporting science, and in particular, supporting basic science.

- So you talk about the importance of supporting basic science, and that goes back 80 years in the United States.

Right after World War II, a system was set in place by Vannevar Bush and many others to say, "We're gonna do, we're gonna fund, the government's gonna fund basic research, but do it at university labs and then allow it to be commercialized."

And that gave the U.S. a lead in the past 80 years.

Is that being threatened now?

- It's certainly in more jeopardy than I've ever seen in my 26 years as a professor, and I think that many of my colleagues have ever seen in their careers as well.

You summarized it beautifully.

A crown jewel of our government, a crown jewel of the investment of taxpayers has been to support science and the advances that come from science, which have saved millions of lives, have driven economic growth in our country and in other countries, have increased the efficiency with which we can do many things that are important to us, in industry, in, in just life as a citizen, have increased our ability to operate while minimizing damage to our environment, have addressed energy crises.

Not to mention, just basic things that we take for granted now that have dramatically extended human life.

Like don't eat trans fats.

Just about every aspect of what we know currently to help maximize the quality of our life and the length of our lives has ultimately come from science, and much of it from United States federal support of science, paid for by taxpayers.

And I think taxpayers deserve and would want those benefits to continue.

- Wade, you talk about taxpayers paying for it, but then people commercialize it.

Let me just take your lab as an example.

When you do basic research, do you keep it proprietary, or does everybody in the world and certainly taxpayers get the benefit from it?

- Yeah, we publish everything.

We open source everything.

So as soon as we believe that the work has been rigorously tested enough and reproduced enough and tested in as many contexts, and we have at least a basic understanding of something we think is really useful, like base editing or prime editing, we publish it.

And not only do we publish it, we put the DNA blueprint that allows anybody to use it for nonprofit use in a nonprofit library of DNA blueprints called Addgene.

And Addgene tells us that thus far, about 30,000 times, researchers from all over the world, thousands of labs around the world have used those DNA constructs from this library of our research.

So we want the public, not just in the U.S., but everywhere to benefit from these advances, because after all, we're all on a shared mission to improve the quality and length of human life.

And we believe that since taxpayers funded our research ultimately, or the vast majority of it, that the taxpayers should be able to see the fruits of that research.

- One of the problems that you mentioned is that we're now cutting back drastically on federal funding for research.

Whether it's the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation.

There's also a more specific issue, which is targeting some of the research universities, including Harvard, with which you are affiliated, where you teach, places like that, have been targeted.

It seems to me that when that targeting is done, the people who really get hurt are the people doing medical research, and especially the students and grad students.

Have you seen that these cuts mean that people have to be laid off when they're doing research?

- Absolutely.

It is just one of the biggest tragedies I've observed in my professional life, that because of these cuts, not only are grants just being immediately terminated, so the amount of funding that you have to support a graduate student or a postdoc or a research sample or an animal study or a clinical trial sometimes suddenly goes to zero, but students are now being told that there is no way we can pay you.

So some of my colleagues have had to cut the researchers, the students and the postdocs in their labs.

We have also seen students and postdocs that were bound for our university now say, "Well, I can't really come here because I'm worried that there isn't going to be a mechanism by which I can safely do my research and my training uninterrupted."

There's a lot of worry, of course, from international students that make up a large fraction of the research people that drive this enterprise.

You know, these are some of the very best and brightest people from all over the world.

And they used to be selected on the basis of their excellence to come to the United States because that's where they believe the best science was being done.

Now we're having candidates that have, in some cases, already accepted positions in the United States say, "I'm sorry.

I can't do that.

There looks like there's too big of a risk that because this university is being targeted or because the research that supports the field that I'm in is being cut, that I am just better off in another country."

- So we're gonna have a brain drain, we're gonna have a brain drain from the United States 'cause of this?

- It's already taking place.

It's not a matter of there will be.

I'm already seeing it in real time, and others are as well.

This is not just the student issue as well.

You know, base editing and prime editing, the gene-editing technologies that we just talked about, those were developed in my lab in the United States, funded largely by U.S. taxpayers.

There are currently more clinical trials using base editing and prime editing in other countries, including China, than there are in the United States, despite the fact that these were United States inventions.

- So you think China can now surpass us in gene editing because of these cuts and the targeting of Harvard and other universities?

- Not just in gene editing.

In lots of fields of biotechnology and biomedicine, China is already premier and in many respects is already passing, if not already passing the United States.

This is a time we really should be doubling down on our investment of science in maintaining the U.S. innovation, the strength of the United States science research.

And instead, there's just a culture of fear, a culture of doubting whether the United States is the best place where our most talented students should launch their careers.

And it's heartbreaking to see, frankly, - Can it be reversed?

Can we recover from this?

- Well, the good and the bad news is the generational time in science is short.

I became a professor five years after I was a graduate student.

And it can be a very short cycle time.

The downside of that is that we will feel and are already feeling the impact of these cuts and of the loss of student confidence in United States science.

And that will happen, continue to happen for the next several years, even if all of the current policies are reversed.

But the bright side might be that as long as there's a continued dialogue with the government and with science institutions, and hopefully one that ends up supporting a more productive path forward, that the damage can also be changed quickly.

- Well, let me get this straight.

The attacks on universities, including Harvard and Columbia, where you, Sam Sternberg, places like that, were done for very political reasons, and we can debate those later.

But the people who got hit, you're saying, are not just the university, it's mainly the researchers because that's where the money's getting cut.

So it's research in science that's taking the hit for the political fight against universities.

- It's mostly young students and young faculty members who, ironically, for better or for worse, are among the least political people in this country.

These are people who have decided to forego higher salaries, easier work hours.

They've made a conscious decision to use their gifts and their talents to do something that is not known for making them wealthy or for giving them an easy life, to be a scientist, to be a scientist at a university.

And these people are not politically motivated.

Very few of them are political activists, for better or for worse.

They just want to make a difference by using their abilities, their dedication, their love for science to advance science and technology into some kind of societal benefit.

That's the common philosophy we all share.

And sadly, those are the people who are being hurt the most by the current situation.

- We've talked about the attacks on science from many different ways.

One is the cutback just in general of research, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation.

The other is targeting universities where the research is done.

And then there's a third, which is sort of what's happening in the FDA or Health and Human Services and Surgeon General, of questioning the type of science we're doing.

Do you think there's a way that we can change that perception of science and somehow save this 80-year system we have of having basic research lead to things that make us healthier?

- I think it, frankly, is all up to the public.

That's the component of society that I hold the most hope out for reinforcing the idea.

Proven over thousands and thousands of examples over decades, as you've pointed out, that investment in science returns many manyfold benefits to society.

I believe that the public should become increasingly aware of the benefits of science, and therefore of the potential harm done to themselves and their loved ones if science isn't supported.

And I'm hopeful that the public will say, you know, we really believe that among the various ways that government can and should change, cutting wholesale science, burning our seed corn, as I like to call it, is not maybe the best kind of change to have.

So I'm hoping that, and part of the reason why I am on this show, doing this interview, is I really hope that more public awareness of science, how the science enterprise works, why it's so important to our country and to the world as a whole, that their awareness and their feelings about the topic will ultimately help put us on a better path.

- David Liu, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you so much for your interest.

Thank you all for listening.

- And inspiring pioneer.

And just a reminder that this scientific research is for the common good.

It also happens to save lives.

And that's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up on the show every night, sign up for our newsletter at PBS.org/Amanpour.

Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

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