On at least half a dozen occasions in recent years—often on the sidelines of some swell D.C. media party or Bay Area tech conference—I have found myself in the company of Jim Steyer, the perpetually buoyant lawyer, children’s advocate, Stanford professor, and man–around–media executives. Jim is perhaps best known as the founder of Common Sense Media, which he launched more than two decades ago as a practical guide for parents trying to navigate movies, television, music, and video games. Today, the organization has evolved into a global child-advocacy platform confronting the most powerful technology companies in the world over social media, privacy, and now, artificial intelligence.

In a recent, wide-ranging conversation on The Grill Room, Steyer explained how Common Sense shifted from rating content to evaluating platforms, why he believes the values of individual tech leaders determine corporate behavior, and how the A.I. arms race has created urgent risks for children and families. Along the way, he offered unusually candid assessments of friends and enemies including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei, while also addressing his brother Tom’s current campaign for governor of California. Herewith, some highlights from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Dylan Byers: What is Common Sense Media, and what were you trying to build when you launched it?

Jim Steyer: I’m really a child advocate. My life’s work has been about low-income, disadvantaged children. I started Common Sense Media in 2003 because I wrote a book in 2002 called The Other Parent, about the media’s effect on your children. I also wanted to create an organization that had mass numbers of users so that children would have a strong voice. If you think about AARP for senior citizens or the Sierra Club for the environment, they have tens of millions of people. So we built the media platform for Common Sense Media basically as a Trojan horse to get you to join a child-advocacy organization.

What does Common Sense do?

We rate, educate, and advocate. With ratings, we started with movies and TV. When I started Common Sense, no one rated movies other than Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. I remember going to see Bob Iger, Bob Daly and Terry Semel at Warner Bros., Jeff Shell [at Universal], and I said, “I’m going to rate all your movies and TV shows.” And they were all like, What do you mean? And I’m like, “Well, we’re gonna do it because there needs to be a Consumer Reports–like guide for media.” And since 2007, when social media took off, our goal now is to help parents navigate that landscape. It’s basically nutritional labeling for media and technology.

Once you move from movies to social media, the problem changes. How do you even rate something like that?

You’re exactly right. You can’t rate every single YouTube video that’s been uploaded. Since we started talking, there’ve been a thousand new videos uploaded. So we had to figure out how to give parents guardrails. And number two, we went heavily on advocacy. We started writing laws, primarily in California because Washington is so dysfunctional. You can’t rate every video, but we can tell you who Mr Beast is, or who the top people are on TikTok that you need to be aware of—for your kids—pro and con.

Do you think you’re more effective now dealing with tech platforms than you were dealing with Hollywood?

I think we’re more effective. It’s a very different world. Because I’m a Stanford professor and have been since the 1980s, many of these startup guys took my class. Almost all these guys are parents, so they all use Common Sense Media. This is also now true for the A.I. guys—Sam Altman, Dario at Anthropic, Sundar at Google. So we’ve known them personally, and they use Common Sense Media themselves.

Every tech C.E.O. talks about safety. Who actually means it?

You can look at the behavior of the companies and their long-term impact on society—not just in terms of kids and families, but on democracy and on our broader society here in the U.S. and globally—based on who the people are at the top. That’s why we posterize, quite frankly, Facebook, because I don’t believe the leadership of that company fundamentally cares about children and families. I do not. I wrote a book called Talking Back to Facebook. They wrote me threatening letters trying to block the publication. What a joke. I’m a First Amendment law professor at Stanford.

And Elon, I do know Elon a little. He has a lot of kids, and he is aware that he has a lot of children. But I put him in his own category.

If you look at the leadership of Google—I don’t mind saying this—Sundar, Ruth Porat, some of the other senior executives, they actually are really thoughtful, caring people. That doesn’t mean I agree with them. They resist regulation. They’re this huge, behemoth company. But do I actually believe that they care about kids? I do.

Quite frankly, you look at Dario Amodei, for example, the founder and C.E.O. of Anthropic. He’s a really good guy. He actually cares about this a lot. He’s cut his own path separate from OpenAI. If you look at Sam Altman, who’s now married and has Chris Lehane there running all his politics for him, who’s probably the single most important political player in the A.I. world—do they care? I actually do think they care some about kids.

That doesn’t mean that they all agree with our regulatory efforts. We’re right and they’re wrong. They’re just trying to win this massive arms race. But I think you have to go company by company to the values and ethics of the leaders. And I think this is true in social media.

Let’s talk about A.I. Why is this moment different?

This is an arms race at warp speed. It’s way bigger than the social media arms race was. By the age of 4, most kids in the United States have their own tablet. By the time they’re 10 or 11, they have their own smartphone—a mini computer with access to everything. You can’t trust the companies to regulate themselves. The idea of self-regulation has proven to be a failure, no matter what, because of the money involved.

What kind of guardrails are actually realistic for A.I.?

We wrote a chatbot law in California last year that Governor Newsom vetoed under heavy pressure from the tech companies. We were right, but they had way more money and power. Someone has to create an independent A.I. safety-testing platform—a trusted, third-party benchmarking system. The government won’t do it fast enough, and the companies can’t run it themselves. It’s expensive, it’s complicated, but it’s doable. And that’s the big battleground in the next two to three years.

Your brother, Tom Steyer, is running for governor. How do you think about his candidacy—and the challenge of being labeled a billionaire in politics?

My brother is an incredibly hardworking, smart person of the highest integrity. He happens to have the word “billionaire” in front of his name, but he’s not into money at all. He lives very simply, and he and his wife have given away the vast majority of the money they’ve earned. He’s going to be called a billionaire in every campaign ad and every article, and he’s going to have to own that. But if he can show people who he really is—that he cares deeply about low-income families, communities of color, and environmental issues—I think he can overcome it.

One of the strengths he has is that he’s not beholden to anybody. He doesn’t need anyone’s money, and he’s not doing this as a lark. If he can communicate that effectively, I think he’d be a great governor.