But she has remained plugged into — and worried — about what is happening with technology, particularly with the accelerating rise of artificial intelligence and its potential for causing even more damage than she thinks has already been done by social media, smartphones and other products that haven’t been tightly regulated.
Swisher told The Associated Press that she hopes Burn Book serves as a shot across the bow of both the technology industry and governments around the world, a warning that the same missteps that happened during the past 20 years must not be repeated as artificial intelligence seeps into all corners of society.
“Don’t get fooled a second time,” Swisher said of what she hopes the book’s main takeaway will be. “We need our government to make these (technology-industry) people accountable and that has not happened. We need them to understand consequences because they certainly haven’t done us right on the damaging parts of technology. We need to stop letting them off the hook.”
Swisher initially didn’t even want to write another book, partly because she has become more interested in focusing on her Pivot podcast. But she but finally got on a roll after she hired Nell Scovell, who co-wrote a best-selling book with former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, to help her remember all the stories she accumulated.
Those recollections led her to disassemble some of the world’s richest people in her book, but Swisher isn’t worried about the blowback.
“I don’t care what they think,” Swisher said. “The worst thing I do is tell people what I think of them, but I am being truthful.”
Musk, who also runs rocket ship maker SpaceX and social media company X, used a pejorative term for anus to describe Swisher in his last email sent to her in October 2022, according to her book.
