Aaron Sorkin talking to MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle
MS NOW
Director Aaron Sorkin says he’s “as concerned as can be” about the future of AI–especially with tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg visiting the White House and convincing the president that companies like Meta should essentially self-police the development of AI, rather than having the government take that role.
In an interview Friday with MS NOW anchor Stephanie Ruhle, Sorkin–whose new movie “The Social Reckoning” focuses on investigative reports on Facebook and the power that tech billionaires have on politics–said that “there are no guardrails. There’s certainly no laws. The law has always lagged way behind technology.”
“But in the past, that really only affected movies and music, piracy, copyright laws,” Sorkin said. “And now it’s something much more severe.”
Sorkin told Ruhle that tech leaders are not only influencing the development of policy on AI, they’re influencing the people who could independently decide on those missing guardrails.
“The very people who can help, lawmakers, their campaigns are being funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk,” Sorkin said on MS NOW’s Money, Power, Politics. “So when you see the tech billionaires, those tech oligarchs hanging out at the White House…we should feel like the house is on fire.”
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 29: CEO of Meta Platforms Mark Zuckerberg (R) looks at U.S. President Donald Trump as he holds a press briefing with AI executives following a meeting on artificial intelligence outside the West Wing of the White House on September 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. The meeting comes as some have called for a slowdown in AI development amid rising safety concerns. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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‘I love your show’
In the interview Friday, Sorkin told Ruhle “I love your show,” but joked that “plainly you couldn’t book any other guests, and you got to me.”
Sorkin told Ruhle “your show is called ‘Money, Power, Politics.’ So it’s important that I tell you I don’t know anything about any of those things.” Sorkin said that included AI. “That’s my way of telling you I don’t know anything about AI, but it does sound like exactly what the AI people are telling us,” he said, that right now, the AI companies–and their LLMs–are operating without any oversight.
“They’re now flanking this president, right, not just at the inauguration, but, as we’re watching, Mark Zuckerberg himself is the one who handed around a draft of what AI policy should be, and they’re saying, yes, yes, yes, we should self-police,” Ruhle said of the tech CEOs.
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 05: Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing entitled ‘Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower’ on Capitol Hill October 5, 2021 in Washington, DC. Haugen left Facebook in May and provided internal company documents about Facebook to journalists and others, alleging that Facebook consistently chooses profit over safety. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Sorkin’s new film tells the story of former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who testified before Congress in 2021 as a whistleblower, arguing that Facebook had repeatedly ignored safety concerns. “She was trying to get her bosses’ attention, but they weren’t paying attention, isn’t that understating it, right?” Ruhle asked Sorkin.
“That’s right,” Sorkin said. “There’s a scene in the movie where Mark Zuckerberg, who’s played by Jeremy Strong — he just gives a thunderous performance in the movie — he is being shown that there is a way to reduce civic misinformation by 38 percent, by more than a third. And it would only cost 1 percent in engagement.”
“And that 1 percent is much too high a price to pay,” Sorkin said.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 04: (L-R) Wunmi Mosaku, Jeremy Allen White, Mikey Madison, Jeremy Strong, and Betty Gilpin attend Columbia Pictures’ “The Social Reckoning” World Premiere at Regal Union Square on October 04, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
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‘It’s a great journalism story’
Sorkin said the new film has “the same DNA as ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘Spotlight,’ and ‘The Insider.’ ”It’s a David and Goliath story…it’s a great journalism story.”
“Frances picks up a stone and throws it at Facebook at the end of the film, and print journalism picks up a stone and throws it at tech…this is a woman built for a life in tech, brilliant, brilliant woman, who has — knew she was going to be giving all that up by becoming a whistle-blower. Nobody hires whistle-blowers. And it’s not like she was naive about it.”
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