Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/22/26: Trump Media Ban Backfires, DraftKings Caught Targeting Addicts, AI Anthropic Wet Lab

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump media ban backfires, DraftKings caught exploiting gambling addicts, Anthropic AI wet lab exposed.   Kevin Roose: https://www.youtube.com/@machinegodspodAlex ...Bores: https://www.alexbores.nyc/   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:01:44 We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, ad staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Got some updates for you in Trump's War on the Media, so you may have already heard that he decided to kick CNN, MS Now, and Politico out of the White House. Well, the other mainstream media outlets, to include Fox News, decided that in solidarity with those outlets, they would not participate in the White House press pool. So that led to a very unusual situation yesterday where Trump was doing an event, some sort
Starting point is 00:02:30 of ribbon-cutting ceremony or some sort of thing like that. And you had the video, but you had no audio whatsoever. However, let's take a listen to how they handled that. Okay. So there is no microphone because there's no microphone because the pool cameras aren't there. So maybe, Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit. Pick up on or some of things Michael was saying. And obviously the ramifications are right here.
Starting point is 00:02:58 Can't hear what the president's saying. Particularly amusing, Sager, because that was Newsmax, which is obviously very much in the tank for Trump. So for them to even say, like, maybe this. backfire just a little bit on him is a pretty stunning admission. Yeah, it's like his worst nightmare is not having television. In fact, the only time we saw Trump on camera yesterday is when he did an event with Mayor Mamdani. And that was only because New York City media was there at the request of Mondani and not the White House press pool. I will not cape for the White House Correspondents Association. I was a member, frankly, they are a cartel, which is extremely old and control. Like,
Starting point is 00:03:34 and it's not me saying this. Ryan would reiterate a lot of this. too from a lot of the same problems that he's had with DropSight for credential. Like the way that they run these organizations like the White House or Congress, it's very legacy media forward. However, the White House is trying to hijack some of that to basically control what type of coverage that they get. So there are no heroes in particular in this story. I just want to make that clear.
Starting point is 00:03:59 However, what they've done is they have created a situation where once again, they preemptively ban the White House press pool. Well, everyone could have predicted that everyone would stand tall with the organizations which have been booted out. Why? Because even when I was there, attack on one is attack on all. It's literally a cartel. We're like, we can't let the cartel be broken. And so if they get to decide who is in charge of the camera footage or not, then all of us need to stand for that person. They did it when Obama attacked Fox News. He tried to kick them out back in 2009, I want to say, the entire White House press corps. kind of stood with Fox News then at the time specifically so that Fox would stand with them as they are now. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:41 And what it all means is, you know, even to say the pool, what does it mean? All the journalists who cover the White House, there's hundreds of them, cannot all fit into the same room with the president. And so every day, there is an assigned member of that press corps to be the representative of the rest of the press corps. I used to do this job where you kind of sit there and you wait for Trump and see what he's going to say. and then you send the message to the rest of the press corps. You're not allowed to exclusively report it for yourself. That's the same thing with the TV camera. There's a guy there with a TV camera.
Starting point is 00:05:12 Even though he works for CNN, let's say on that day, that footage is being broadcast to all of the networks and the people who subscribe to the pool. They also pay for that privilege, and they pay a lot of money to be able to do so. So that's what it all means, and that's why they're all boycotting. And that's why some of the boycotts that are happening right now.
Starting point is 00:05:30 But it has backfired on Trump, actually, because they're all now saying, not only will I not publish any of the video, even the still photographers, including Trump's favorite, is a guy named Doug Mills. He works for the New York Times. Best photographer I've ever seen in my life. This guy, even he, they're now saying, like, oh, we won't be publishing still images or any of their, you know, images that they're trying to distribute to try and circumvent the hold that the White House press court has.
Starting point is 00:05:55 Yeah. And, I mean, basically the idea is that you should have, anytime the president is in public, you should have a camera and audio on him because he's just inherently newsworthy. Well, anything can happen. Like 9-11. I mean, that's literally the story. And part of the reason why the president should always happen with them is you don't know what the hell is going to happen.
Starting point is 00:06:13 I mean, one day you're in a Florida classroom and the next day you're on Air Force One, you know, taking on going to Barksdale Air Force Base and trying to broadcast the most important statements that the president can make because war can break out literally at any time. They tell us that whenever you're there. You never know what's going to happen. You may be sitting in a damn golf course for the 90th time. Yeah. But you don't know.
Starting point is 00:06:33 You know, you don't know what happened. Well, and I mean, it's obviously of a piece with his whole war on the press. The man literally thinks it should be illegal for people to criticize him. And he said this. This is not me making this up. That is his view. Is that the press should never be critical of him, that he should get only fawning coverage, that if you don't, I mean, he goes after Fox News all the time for not being fawning enough
Starting point is 00:06:55 in their worshipful praise of him. Or if they put out a poll, that looks bad for him or his party because their polling outfit is actually pretty legit. He gets upset about that and about their fake polls. So he has this incredibly authoritarian view of what the news media should be. And we've obviously seen the lawsuits and the threats of lawsuits and the use of the FCC to, Badger late-night comedians who tell a joke that he doesn't like. This is a part and parcel.
Starting point is 00:07:22 And then that's without even getting into the fact that, you know, the Ellisons are taking over vast swaths of our media empires so that you have Trump-aligned oligarchs in control of important media outlets, including, you know, I think CNN will probably be allowed back in once the Ellisons are fully in control because they've promised major changes to the network. So this is obviously how he operates. He does not believe in having a press that is adversarial whatsoever. We can put D2 up on the screen. This is him defending his decision to kick them out. He says the is not instituting an assault on the free press, something which I cherish, L.O.L. It is instituting an assault on fake news, something that has grown like cancer in our beloved United States of
Starting point is 00:08:07 America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, totally out of control. It's a threat to our national security and must be stopped now. That's the other thing they hate is all of the accurate reporting about what is actually going on in Iran to include, you know, the images that have now come out of all of the destruction of our bases and our military equipment on the ground in the Middle East. He was at a press conference with Zoran Mamdani yesterday, which is a whole other thing that was going there. He met with Zoran at Gracie Mansion in New York City.
Starting point is 00:08:41 The bromance does continue. In any case, he got asked about this media ban. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. You would think that an outlet would write at least reasonably well, but never. If you look at CNN as fake news, if you look at MS now, I don't even know what MS now is like, I guess, It's the MSNBC, what it used to be, or MSDNC, as some people call it. That's Democrat National Committee.
Starting point is 00:09:04 But it's just biased news. And I think that these outlets have an obligation to be fair. And if they're fake news, I really think I have an obligation not to allow them into another very special house. This is a special house, Gracie Mansion. Well, the White House is the most special of all houses, I have to say. And I don't even think the mayor would argue with that. And I think I have an obligation not to let fake news. for the country, very bad for national security, so I have that obligation.
Starting point is 00:09:32 Not a really comfortable moment for Zoron there, he's sort of staring off into the distance like, okay, I just have to stand here and take it. Something I have not considered is how much of this is about munitions. Because what I see now, literally from this morning, Trump, the cowards and traders would love to say the United States is low on munitions is not true. We have more munitions that we could ever possibly think of using, and are building them now at levels we've never seen before.
Starting point is 00:09:55 previously the three outlets had been banned had all published stories specifically about munitions so it is actually very possible that this is not even necessarily about him but of his anger of publishing some of these classified information or classified information you don't even need classified information to figure it out but some of the classified stories so it actually makes it worse in my opinion because you're not being banned over some stupid stormy you know some fc's which i'm not saying that would be bad like that would be bad too. But to ban over accurate wartime reporting in the middle of said war, that makes it, I think, actually a lot worse. I think that's definitely what's going on here. That is about panic about the accuracy of what's being reported from the battle.
Starting point is 00:10:37 I think that is absolutely part of what is going on here for sure. And in addition to his just general hatred of any sort of adversarial press, but I think in this specific moment, that's why this is blowing up. Republicans are being pressed on this. Steve Scalise being reviewed on the Sunday shows. This is D6, guys. Let's take a list to how this went for him. First of all, I don't think we've had a president that's been more open to the press. Look, I've been at, you go to a bill signing with President Trump. And the first thing he does before he even signs the bill is he brings in the press. And everybody gets to not only take pictures, but ask questions. Go look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden removed the press credentials from over 400
Starting point is 00:11:18 different agencies. You know, what President Trump's done is brought a lot of those back. in, but he wants a free and fair press. He's, you know, been to the White House correspondence dinner. He just, the other day, he was answering questions about this to the press, and they're asking him about his attitude towards the press while he's holding a press conference. Yeah. You never saw that under President Biden. So, so, sorry, open president. So, so first of all, that's actually not true about, about Biden. They, the 400 individual reporters who had credentials did not reapply. There was only one that was actually denied a credential. And all of those who didn't reapply were allowed to come in.
Starting point is 00:11:56 They were not banned from the White House. That did not happen. The other thing that Republicans bring up is what you referenced before, which was under Obama, there was an attempt to ban Fox News from one particular interview. So not even like blanket ban, not, you know, it was Fox News, this one particular interview. And there was a whole Republican freak out over it. To be fair, it was part of a bigger strategy. Ben Rhodes and those people had a long stand.
Starting point is 00:12:21 They hate it. I mean, I get it. hated Fox. They were like, they're, you know, at this was... I mean, it was genuinely a partisan outlet. This was like OG. Founded as part of a Republican political practice. In the same way, you know, they hate MSNBC. Like, I get it. They were especially furious about birtherism, which was happening at the time. And they were like, screw it. Let's ban them. And so that was like the intro to it. What they didn't anticipate was Jake Tapper and all those people at the time being like, hey, you can't be doing this.
Starting point is 00:12:47 Like, you can't be telling us what we can and can't. And ultimately, they did fold. Yeah. Trump also tried to ban Caitlin. Collins from the White House in 2019 around when I was there. They sued and they won. There is longstanding court precedence. They basically, at every turn, they have been able to overturn bans from the actual White House grounds on First Amendment principles. That said, the pool is actually a little bit of a different story. And that one, I'm not sure that will be resolved, because there is no constitutional right to the White House press pool or to the cartel. I would not expect that one to be resolved. We do also have D7. Let's put it up here on the screen.
Starting point is 00:13:27 Trump is launching something called Trump TV, which is the White House Essentials. It will be official state-run media. The White House has always had a YouTube account and has broadcasts some of their events. I think what they're trying to get around is what happened yesterday, which again, I presume Trump is furious about, is normally the White House does not have coverage or at least the same type of coverage that these networks have for obviously a good reason. They don't have boom mics and making sure that the president is miced up while he's doing event that's usually the job of the press corps itself. But by and large, I mean, this is the White House had already set up precedent.
Starting point is 00:14:10 I apologize for too much inside baseball. But already what they have done has made it so that when, by, you know, whoever Democrat wins, they're not going back to the way that things used to be. The way it is right now is far preferable for the people who are in power. They've cut off extraordinary amounts of normal press acts. Stupid stuff, which sounds dumb, but is actually important. You usually can't go to the press secretary's office anymore. It used to be, you can't just walk in there.
Starting point is 00:14:37 Now, you can't do that anymore. Well, Ryan loves to point out, you know, all the State Department briefing that we got all those tortured, you know, from the fat soger that would go out there. Okay, all right. He doesn't look like me. Many people are saying, anyway. We don't even share the same genetics. All those people that would go there and be, you know, give these torturous answers about like, oh, no, we don't think it's a war crime. We'll look into it.
Starting point is 00:15:00 We'll get back to you. We don't get that anymore because they don't do those briefings. And then you also have. And those are a great way for like, you know, a reporter like Ryan who may not get credentials for the White House, but can show up to those briefings. And they asked, dropside asked all kinds of really consequential questions there. and at least were, you know, exposed some things and made those people uncomfortable and have to answer questions. That just doesn't happen anymore. And then you have the whole Pentagon thing where basically anyone who was legit, who had any sort of scruples in their reporting whatsoever,
Starting point is 00:15:31 could not agree to the terms of effectively, like, you won't report anything. We don't want you to report. What journalists would agree to that? Well, a bunch of like shoddy influencers who are completely partisan and they still haven't even held briefings for them. But that's my point is we're not going back. Is that these Biden press conferences, I don't know. You really think so? You don't, you, sometimes you don't understand the way that Democrats can operate. Truly. Like, there is still this very, like, liberal, normie veneration for, like, the free press, then this is the way things should be done. And we don't want to be like them.
Starting point is 00:16:03 That's fair. It depends. If we get a John Ossoff, is he going to kick all the right-wing, like, reporters out of the room? Absolutely not. Well, a lot of them, though, are not reporters, right? Like, a lot of them are literally worked for, like, Lindel TV. Yeah, I kind of think we're going to go. Yeah, that's what I mean. I think they probably won't get up. In terms of like, you know, is he going to ban Fox News?
Starting point is 00:16:22 Oh, I see. No, he's not going to do that. And so, yeah, I just, it's, Trump is fairly unique in what he's willing to do and how far he's willing to go. Now, I think these sorts of breaking of these norms and institutions, you can never put it all the way back together. But I don't know that I would be so convinced that a Democrat will, like, go so hard against media. they see as being biased or unfair as Trump does. That's my last thing since we have a little bit of time is, you know, this doesn't make it, it does not good for you.
Starting point is 00:16:54 Like many, what I have watched with the Pentagon, for example, you know, you're bringing in Logan Paul. You're be clowning yourself. Like, and a good friend who works in the Pentagon was telling me, you know, Hexat screwed up because these people are already kind of, they're already baked in pro-military neocons. The best thing that the press did for the military over the last 20s. years is they laundered a lot of their bullshit because to, you know, maintain the relationships. So by declaring war on them, a lot of them actually started reporting the truth. Whereas previously
Starting point is 00:17:27 when you have to maintain relationships and access in the building, you would be much more on their side, you know, to report. And there's also, and there is, I truly believe this. In fact, I know I do. Iron sharpens iron. You are way better off when you're sharp. I mean, one of the things is, and you see this, when candidates are in fighting form on the campaign. Abdul is a good example. I mean, the guy just, you know, is hit after hit after hit. And in fact, you know, ever since that whole Jesse Waters thing, I think he's become a little bit better. But that was an important moment for him. I'm like, oh, man, you know, this didn't work out entirely. On my behalf, I created a national news cycle that I probably shouldn't have. I need to sharpen up.
Starting point is 00:18:03 And I have seen how Trump and a lot of the other Republicans, when you get ensconced in your, you know, GOP podcast bubble, then all of a sudden you come back up for air and you get hit in a debate or something and you just, you don't have it anymore. And I've seen that time and time again with a lot of these politicians. Yeah, no doubt about it. You see that with candidates, the ones who are willing to go on, I mean, Rocahn is another good example. Yeah, he'll go on everywhere. And he can handle it because there's no question that he hasn't already dealt with and anticipated. Whereas AOC, different story. All right. Draft Kings. Let's get to it. The long loading times.
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Starting point is 00:19:11 We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rudd, Michael Boubley. Seth Myers. And making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Ashton Earl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone to do. Okay, well control is a harsh word. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving advice. Listen to Hey Jonas on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. Follow Hey Jonas and start listening on the free IHeartRadio app today.
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Starting point is 00:19:49 where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore.
Starting point is 00:20:05 A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday, and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way.
Starting point is 00:20:27 You have to come to the last bookstore, though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other.
Starting point is 00:20:46 You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The conversation around sports betting continues to dominate at least a lot of elite media as we see this epidemic sweep across the nation. NFL season is here. Week two came and went billions of dollars were wagered just in a single. week and now interviews with many of these burgeoning addicts are beginning to come to light.
Starting point is 00:21:20 Here's one that CBS just did. Let's take a listen. How often do you bet? Oh, every day. People wake up and check newspaper. I wake up and check who's playing. But football season is high season for him. Let's go.
Starting point is 00:21:32 On this college football Saturday, he's got $250 down on four games. If he wins all four, this bet will pay $3,000. But Esteban wins only one. So after a friend comes over, he tries it all again. Northern Illinois plus 31.5. You tell me plus 31 a half don't cover against the defensive team. Four more games. He loses another 250.
Starting point is 00:22:00 Just like that, he's down 500 bucks. How much money do you bet a year? Probably 80 to 100,000, 120. Which has to be approaching the amount of money you make a year. 90, 7. Oh, you got to make a better pass than that. That's right. Great route.
Starting point is 00:22:16 This single 29-year-old pest control salesman bets as much as he makes, if not more. I'm getting paid this week. I'm about to put it all down. Your paycheck this week. Yeah, sometimes I like, well, I like this game a lot. Yeah, let's just all put it on there. And then, look, I got paid double this week.
Starting point is 00:22:31 Or? I mean, ramen noodle for the rest of the week. So there you have it. You have here a guy who makes decent money. 29 years old. I can't tell if he's married or not. No offense, doesn't look it. Pest control salesman.
Starting point is 00:22:44 who is betting his entire yearly salary a year on a week by week basis. Some weeks I eat double, some weeks I eat ramen. And you could see kind of that miserable existence of sitting and living and dying game by game. I mean, that that $250 and then you lose and then you double and you chase your losses like going on tilt. That is the story. And okay, he has individual responsibility. He's an idiot. Fine.
Starting point is 00:23:10 But what about the technology and the legislators and the whole system? that enables and lives off of him. Yeah. What about that? Why would you allow that? Gambling addiction is a real thing. Oh, it is the most potent. I mean, it is real.
Starting point is 00:23:25 It is devastating. This guy clearly suffers from it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be risking more than your entire salary. He said he makes $97,000, and he's betting $100 to $120,000 a year. You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out. You don't need to type this in to Open AI
Starting point is 00:23:44 your calculator app to figure out, that's not going to work out for you over the long term. And this man, I'm sure, is not intellectually so stupid that he can't also do that math, but he's hooked. And what's he hooked on? It's the promise of this time. It's going to be the time. This one is going to hit. This one, it's that constant dopamine hit the anticipation. What if it's this one? What if I get this big payday? What if that changes my life? And increasingly, this is what our entire economy is built on. It's no long. the American dream. The American dream, this is the American dream,
Starting point is 00:24:16 is that your parlay is going to hit. For young men, that's like, which it won't. The new American, and it's not going to. It's rigged just like the original American Dream. It literally will not. This one is even more blatantly rigged against you.
Starting point is 00:24:27 Over the long term, maybe you'll have a good, you will have a good week here or there where you're feeling great. Over the long term, they will take everything. Everything if you continue in this direction. Right.
Starting point is 00:24:36 And so this is now paired with, look, none of this is actually all that revelatory. I'm always amazed by what things break through and don't, but for some reason, people woke up to things that we've been talking about here for many years. Let's put the New York Times story up on the screen, E1, where the Times reports about how Draft Kings uses AI to target the gamblers' likely as to lose. Again, if you are surprised by this, this is called basic practices. This is how they make money. This is why online sports gambling is so devastating, because you have the phone, which you're already addicted to,
Starting point is 00:25:10 combined with money, which you can't afford to lose, combined with the most sophisticated machine learning algorithms that even predate these AI models, which is exactly what they write. In 2023, Draft Kings took customer betting records and built a machine learning model, which seeks the patterns and the data to answer the question, who is more likely to respond to promotions by gambling and losing even more money. They decided to prioritize free bets, bonuses for likely losers, and soon a question began to nod at them, aren't many of these people prone to addiction? The guy decides to be a concerned whistleblower,
Starting point is 00:25:47 and no offense to the person who ran these tests and is now speaking out, dude, that's your whole business model. And like, I've been trying to emphasize this too from the very beginning. Literally 50% of the profit of these companies. 50% comes from the bottom 6%. The addicts, 50% from the small group.
Starting point is 00:26:09 This is like this with all sin is that the vast majority of cigarettes are smoked by daily smokers. The vast majority of alcohol is consumed by alcoholics. The vast majority of money lost is lost by the whales, by the people who are literal addicts and who generally have a large sum that they haven't yet exhausted. What we also know is that all of their advertisements, which this guy we showed you almost certainly fell for, is you can win. It's not true. If you are allowed to bet $250
Starting point is 00:26:38 per game, you are a loser. I can tell you that for certain. Why? Because their machine learning algorithm is so sophisticated that if I logged into Draft Kings right now and I bet in a sharp way, sharp means that somebody who has a general edge,
Starting point is 00:26:54 if I bet sharp, even if I lose, it will say, oh God, sharp customer, we don't want that. And so they will come into my app and say, you're allowed to pay $2.90 a game. So they can't ban me, but they can say we can limit your action. If you are ever allowed to bet in a sustained manner for more than $100 a game, you are a loser. The machine is telling you, loser, loser.
Starting point is 00:27:19 And that is what a lot of these guys don't seem to understand. And they plow them because, I mean, again, people are idiots, but it's like, you know, I get it, where it comes from. Free bet. I'm like, oh, bet five, win 200. Oh, that sounds great. 200. I could pay my electric bill. And so what do you do? You log in. It turns out it's $200 in free credit or you have to cycle through a real $200 and then you lose it all in the first place. Profit boosts, all this other, you know, promotional nonsense. It's just addiction. It is designed
Starting point is 00:27:52 to get you there. There's no consumer protection. There's no, you know, there's no scruples. I mean, the people who built this are just refining the same tactics of the slot machines, which are designed to make you go broke over time. Yes. If they bleed you on every spin, it wouldn't be fun. They have to bleed you so that you lose it over two hours instead of 20 minutes, so you think you have a chance. That's the game.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Yeah. It's hacking the human mind. Right. That's what it is. So all of those are personal responsibility, et cetera. They spend millions and millions and millions of dollars to figure out how to hack human psychology and get you in and keep you in. And for unfortunately a significant minority percentage, especially of young men, it works like a charm.
Starting point is 00:28:40 And they get you in their grips. And it's very hard to get out of. The thing you're tired, I mean, I think it all should be banned. I think we should go back to the days when you had to go to the casino and there's some barrier to entry or you had to like, you know, know, no bookie and do something sketchy on the black market, whatever. I think we need to go back to those days because it's so clear to me now how devastating this absolutely is. But at the very least, the kind of crap you're talking about where they can just rig it where if you're too good, they just like ban you from the app or they, you know, make it limit your action so that you can't ever come out ahead. How is that legal? That shouldn't be legal.
Starting point is 00:29:15 That's completely insane. It's nuts. But they've, you know, they've bought the system and they've paid off whoever they needed to pay off. And so they're able to operate in what should be a completely criminal fashion that I think anyone would look at. And the other thing about this is like, this is what we're getting for AI. Where are my cures to cancer? I know. Where's the solution to climate change I was promised?
Starting point is 00:29:36 No, instead I'm getting AI-derived algorithms to target gambling addicts and make them even more miserable and drowning in debt than there already are. That's great. And then let's talk about the prediction markets. So if I were to sit with the prediction market, they would say, Saga, you're absolutely right. That's why the casino industry is corrupt. And that's why our platform is so much better. Because by definition, we can't limit people's action. We are not, you know, the house which is setting the line or taking advantage of these people
Starting point is 00:30:06 in a certain way. And to that, I would say, show me your win-loss percentage. You know, just show me the amount of customers which actually take profit. Yeah, it's great that you don't limit sharp bettors. It's great out of all of that. But how many of the people actually win? And look, we can do some general math. Let's go ahead and put E6 up here on the screen.
Starting point is 00:30:27 So it turns out that last week, so week two of the NFL, Take a look at this. Cal she did 15.3 billion in notional volume last week. 60% of that volume is on parley bets, which are entirely based on sporting events. This is Dustin Goker. He's a longtime analyst in the industry. He says, my read is this going to be pretty difficult to frame this as non-gambling activity? Yeah, you think. And this is where, you know, if I were to sit with Cali, because they're going to sell me this whole
Starting point is 00:31:00 spiel about how we don't ban betters like the way you're talking about crystal. That's immoral. And that's why we're so much better. Well, guys, if 60% of the money is being bet on a parlay bet, and by the way, as we showed you on this show last week, the people who are taking the other side of that parlay are fan duel and draft kings, then you're doing the same shit. And that those parlay bets have a 20 to 15% house edge, which means, that 15 to 20% of money went to the same company that Kalsi and them are saying that they are better then. That's where all this money is going. I mean, it's just so, like, $15 billion in a single week.
Starting point is 00:31:44 This is bigger than MPAA, the motion picture industry. This is bigger than all forms of entertainment combined. And it's just business is normal. Enabled by the rest of these, enabled by the Trump administration, but every single. state in the nation because they've all got their handouts. You know, to the extent the states have a problem with Calci, they're not getting any tax revenue. Tax revenue is the problem here. How about the fact that, you know, how about the fact that bankruptcy and credit card debt goes up by 25% in any of the state that legalizes this stuff? And now we have California and Texas that are in
Starting point is 00:32:20 on the action. Just wait until the data comes out from those states. It's going to be horrible. And, you know, you think about, we've talked about young men struggling with crisis of purpose and meaning and challenges in the dating market and all those sorts of things. And this is sort of like, feels like a band-aid for that because you get that dopamine hit, like that guy that we played before.
Starting point is 00:32:41 How do you think this is going to go for you long-term? Do you think this is going to increase your desirability? Do you think this is going to increase your, you know... I're speaking my language. I mean, it's true, though. I mean, I agree. I was just thinking about my daughter talks about this, my oldest one with some of the guys that she's dated
Starting point is 00:32:58 where they're like, They're always like, my parley is going to hit. I know. I knew. Yeah. Like, your parlay is not going to hit. Okay. Give it you.
Starting point is 00:33:05 I have never experienced you hitting your parlay. It has never happened. Stop it. And it's like, I'm sure she's not alone in feeling like, why are you obsessed with this? And throwing your money away, don't think that I'm going to be in this one for the long haul. So just, you know, just another thing to add to the mix of your considerations is your approach. I want to tell the guys that. And I'm trying to start.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Maybe I'm the wrong. person for it. I want to start the same type of temperance movement from the 1920s, where women who are out there need to make it known. If you are a sports better, you're a fucking loser and you're not going to get a date. But by definition, you're a literal loser. And second, it means you have bad judgment, you have bad impulse control, and you're not somebody who has the wherewithal to stand up against the system and provide for me in the long term. I think people should recognize that. If you're a woman and you're out there on a first date, one of the first questions you should try to suss out is, hey, do you regularly bet on sports?
Starting point is 00:34:01 If you do, red flag, leave. Completely. It's one of those where, you know, and, you know, look at the data. Dave Ramsey says it all the time. Money is the number one cause of divorce in North America. So if you think that that's not going to spiral, you know, out of control, then you're going to see, too. Like, this, that, and the type of person who thinks the parlay is going to bet is exactly the type of person who is going to have long-term credit card debt, who doesn't understand the financial situation, who by literal definition can't do math.
Starting point is 00:34:32 I mean, all of these are not working out in your favor. I say all of this, though, and I still feel bad because I'm still pitting the individual against the system. And the point is the individual should be protected by the system. But that's not how our economy works. Our economy, I mean, you know, I've flown for free all over the world off of credit card points. I have to be real.
Starting point is 00:34:53 The only reason I get to do that is. is because of idiots like that guy who carry 80% balance and pay, you know, exorbitant interest rates. Like, the flights aren't free. And, you know, if you own stocks, the whole U.S. economy relies on this guy, you know, just going out and spending. And that's the tragedy.
Starting point is 00:35:12 Like, we're all kind of complicit in it. But at the end of the day, you know, you need people who are courageous enough to be like, I don't want to make money. You know, not all money is easy money. Like, it's one of the most ancient things in society is to say, usury is bad, debt and debt mong, you know, people who purvey it are evil are like pervading the community. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:35:34 Like, thief, you know, horse thief was always considered one of the most villainous crimes of the West. And it was like the type of person who would do that in the absence of law and order has to be hung or shot is because they will violate the most basic social contract and they will take advantage of the overall system. But whenever we have a system, which is, you know, so disconnected and kind of faceless in the way AI is, we don't have community enforcement in that same way. So anyway, we should hang horse thieves again. I'm not joke. I'm not joking. I didn't know the history of horse thievery and how consequential it was in Western civilization. It's very important.
Starting point is 00:36:14 It's very important. In the old way, look it up. Look at the way they saw. I believe you. Yeah. No, we've got the three legs of the American economy stool are like health care for old people. Gambling. And AI bubble.
Starting point is 00:36:27 AI Cappex. Yeah. That's very healthy economy we've got here, guys. All right. Kevin Roo's standing by. Let's get to it. The long loading times. The glitchy video calls.
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Starting point is 00:38:53 or wherever you get your podcasts. Very excited now to be joined by our friend of the show, Kevin Ruse, formerly of The New York Times, but he is now the host of the Machine Gods Pod. We will have a link down in the description and also author of a forthcoming book, The AGI Chronicles. So, Kevin, you wrote your very last piece, a column here for The New York Times, which we can put up here on the screen. The world is talking about AI dangers. Now it is time to act.
Starting point is 00:39:22 You see reason for optimism and worry as the world wakes up to what Silicon Valley has been talking about for years. You don't have to give away your book and we'll have you on separately to talk about it. But this is your area of expertise. You've been following pretty daily, the ins and outs, kind of all of these discussions around AGI. Give us a sense in the column in particular, the world is waking up. There's something to be done. But what actually needs to be done? And what are we waking up to?
Starting point is 00:39:49 Well, the thing we're waking up to is what the people in San Francisco where I live and in the AI labs where I just spent the past couple of years reporting this book have been saying amongst themselves for years, which is these systems are getting very powerful, that progress does not appear to be slowing down. In fact, it is accelerating because the AI is becoming capable of contributing to development of more AI. So we have this sort of recursive self-improvement, as it's known, that cycle is starting to kick off. now. And this is something that people I talk to in the industry have been worried about for years. There have been papers and blog posts and conference panels about this moment. But it was a very small group, and they were very sort of fringe within the academic research community, and nobody really took them seriously. And what we've seen over the past couple of weeks with Jacob Coxon resigning from Anthropic and Dario Amade putting out a statement about pacing the frontier and all the other AI
Starting point is 00:40:47 CEOs piling into say, yeah, we think this is going too fast. That's what people are waking up to. And I think that's the message that is finally being heard. Got it. Let's go and put F7 up on the screen. This was a recent announcement that speaks to the power of these models. For a long time, particularly on the left, there's been a lot of skepticism that the models
Starting point is 00:41:06 would ultimately be very powerful. They view it and some still view it as just sort of fancy autocorrect or fancy or stochastic parrot or, you know, that this is all really hype. You now have Open AI announcing that they have resolved, their model has resolved, more than 100 longstanding open problems across most areas of mathematics. We're waiting to get the list of what exactly those are. But it is in recent memory that these models could not solve basic addition, elementary level, then it was high school level, then it was elite high school level,
Starting point is 00:41:41 then it was college level, then it was Ph.D. level. Now you have Open AI claiming they solved one of these Millennium Mouth problems that if you're a mathematician, you saw that you get a million dollars. There is some contestation about exactly how all of that went down. But if you look at the progress over just a few years, this blew away what even many people who were very bullish on the power of the technology predicted here. So help put this in context, this latest revelation from OpenAI and what it says about the current capabilities of these models and where they may be going. It's absolutely huge. I mean, the Millennium Prize problem,
Starting point is 00:42:18 are the seven open problems in math that are considered the hardest. And as you said, if you're a human mathematician and you win one, you not only get a million dollars, but you become a famous mathematician, right? People sort of record your names in the annals of history. These models now are solving these problems like they're easy. So the models have gone from quickly being subhuman at math, you know, being not able to do basic arithmetic, to being wildly superhuman in math.
Starting point is 00:42:48 And you can run them in parallel many, many copies of them to expend the kind of time trying to crack one of these problems that a human would take many lifetimes to spend. So it really is an unfair fight in mathematics. And I think what the people on the inside see that maybe it's harder to understand from the outside is that this is not just math. This kind of progress, this exponential growth and capabilities is happening in discipline after discipline after discipline. They are seeing this sort of wherever they point their kind of tractor beam of compute and resources, they are finding that these models are incredibly capable. So, yeah, I think it's a very significant sort of application of these things. I hope that they're, you know, followed by other big problems in science. But this is the kind of progress that has been freaking out people on the inside for years.
Starting point is 00:43:39 Kevin, let's, you know, you don't have a vested financial interest in any of this. Your reporter, you've been following this now for quite some time. we will hear significant pushback, even from some of our own audiences. We're falling from marketing hype. You know, 100 problems. What does that even mean? Isn't this just marketing for their products to get people like us to talk about it? How do you suss that out, having been in this world now for quite some time?
Starting point is 00:44:05 Yeah, I used to share some of that skepticism. I thought, you know, these tech companies are always telling us they've changed the world, and the truth is never that simple. but what convinced me was just using the models and seeing how good they were getting at doing programming problems for me, at doing various tasks that I needed them to do. I didn't used to be able to use these models for serious work, and now I do.
Starting point is 00:44:27 But I think the thing that is, you know, even if you're skeptical of this is all marketing hype, which I don't think it is, by the way, because these people have been saying the same things for years before they had anything to market, I would just say the thing that should still freak you out is how much these own, AI labs are relying on their own models for internal automation, for doing their own work.
Starting point is 00:44:48 Anthropic recently put out a thing saying that Claude, their AI, is now the lead researcher on 26% of their AI research and development tasks. Not an assistant, not something that they can sort of hand tasks off to, leading the project. So I think that should freak people out, even if they're skeptical about the claims about the, you know, the Millennium Prize problems or whatever. The labs are now using this stuff so regularly that they are starting to kind of turn over control of these systems to their own AIs. Your former colleague Ezra Klein wrote about this recently and did a podcast about it and talked about how the decision that's being made in those instances is not that we're losing control of the AI, which is obviously something that has also happened that we are concerned about seeing in the future as well. what recursive self-improvement means is that you are handing over control to the AI, and he called for an outright ban.
Starting point is 00:45:48 Do you see that as something worth pursuing or something that is even truly feasible, given that sometimes the definitions of these things can be sort of hard to pin down? Yeah, I think I'm sort of behind it in spirit, but I would obviously want to be very focused on the details. I think it's very hard to implement something like a ban on recursive self-improvement. Does that mean that if you work at Open AI, you can't use AI for coding, but if you work at a different company or a supplier company, you can. I just don't know how that works. But yeah, I think this is the real danger here, is not that we are going to lose control, that some rogue agents are going to sort of break out of their box and go attack companies.
Starting point is 00:46:28 That obviously would be bad, and we should prevent that. The danger is that we are creating this cycle inside the AI labs. they are turning over. They are giving away control of their own research and development process to their AIs, which they have not figured out how to control yet.
Starting point is 00:46:45 And which they don't understand. You know, I can't remember who I saw referencing back, Sagar will probably remember, recently to the incident you had with one of the early models where it like, you know, convinced... Yeah, that was Google.
Starting point is 00:46:57 I fell in love with you and was trying to get you to leave your wife and all this sort of crazy stuff. And everyone was just sort of like, well, that's weird. anyway, moving on. But we never actually got to it. Like, why was it doing that? Even from that early version, these things are what they call black boxes. It's not like a program that you code.
Starting point is 00:47:15 They have behavior that is emergent, that is not understood. And so rather than trying to figure out what's going on so that then we can build more powerful models that we perhaps understand, we never got to that place of even understanding the more basic models. And I'm not sure that I actually think the American people do sort of understand or have a feel for that because you're seeing this tremendous opposition to what the AI labs are doing at this point. I think that's right. I think people, even if they don't really have the terminology to put their finger on exactly what it is that feels bad about what the AI companies are doing, I think people understand that these systems are getting better and we don't like it. It's a threat
Starting point is 00:47:54 to our jobs. It's a threat to potentially our lives and our children's futures. This is what freaks people out. I started getting texts from people over the last couple of weeks, just people outside the tech industry. Like, hey, are we all going to die? That seems bad. So I think this is breaking through, and I don't want to be glib about it. The people inside the labs, they are genuinely concerned that the technology that they are building could kill everyone on Earth. That is not marketing hype. That is not a stunt. That is not just some clickbait that people are putting on their press releases. I have talked to these people on the record, off the record, in public, in private. They say the same thing every time. In fact, they are watering down how likely it is that they think
Starting point is 00:48:39 AI could kill us all in public. Their real projections are even scarier than what they'll say online. Wow. You see, so many people have such an immediate revulsion to that, because you're like, then why are you building it? Like, what are you doing here? Can you answer that question for us? I think there are a few reasons that I've heard people give. And again, I talk to more than 150 of these people from my latest book. So I feel like I understand their motivations pretty well. For a lot of them, it's the curiosity of it. It's the what's out there.
Starting point is 00:49:09 They're seekers. They want to know, like, how smart can we make these things? What could they discover? They want these things to go out and solve diseases and cure cancer and fix the climate and things like that. For other people, though, there's this sense that if we don't do it, someone worse will. Right? Like if we, the AI company in San Francisco, don't create this technology. The recipe is not a secret. It's out there. Anyone with the right resources can build theoretically the sort of, you know, the self-improving robot that takes over the world. So we have to get there first so that we can put our safety practices in place so that we don't blow up the world. I want to talk a little bit about the financial aspect of these things. So both Anthropic and OpenAI are planning IPOs. Anthropics is more imminent. Open AI, Sam Altman just said they're pushing
Starting point is 00:50:01 theirs off a year. The always colorful Alex Karp, CEO Palantir, was recently on CNBC saying making the claim that he doesn't think Open AI will ever go public. The reasons he gives are kind of interesting. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. The first line of defense is you're liable for your own actions. So it's a weird twist. They're asking for societal regulation to get out of the first line of defense, which is if you build a technology
Starting point is 00:50:26 that can destroy 10% of the world, that has civil and criminal liability attached to it. The first step is to say, okay, the first step isn't to say we get out of it because we want to self-regulate or we want regulation. The first step is to say, okay, you've disclosed this.
Starting point is 00:50:44 What are you doing about it? And the second step is to say, if you're not doing it, you're not being responsible. We're going to have to get people involved. That's going to be also very complicated because regulating these things need people. You need people who understand them. Another problem we have is seemingly everyone who understands this
Starting point is 00:50:58 is on some payroll. So it's like, you know, who you're going to trust? You know, when we built nuclear energy, we built the bomb. People did it because they believed. They were not on the payroll. The liability that you're talking about. How does that get written into the S-1? What do risk factors sound like?
Starting point is 00:51:14 This is the thing. you're assuming that there will be an S-1. Now, okay, maybe there will be. The only way to deal with this kind of liability is to go to the government and say, nationalize us, please. You know, a lot of times in business, people don't say what they want.
Starting point is 00:51:30 They're leading you to the conclusion. The reason why people have not understood this is, again, every investor, and there are a lot of people who think they're going to make money, they're like, oh, the businesses are the mark. What is the first lesson in poker and in life? if you think the other person's the mark, you're the mark.
Starting point is 00:51:49 You are the mark. And it will be nationalized simply because of the liability issues. So he says it will be nationalized. There will be no IPO because of the liability issues. And I mean, it speaks to what we're talking about here. I have lots of issues with Alex Curb, as you can imagine. But how are you going to have a bank that underwrites a company that's saying, it is a pretty good chance we may just destroy the whole world.
Starting point is 00:52:15 And if we don't, we may cause some sort of a totally catastrophic mass death crisis. Let's go ahead, go ahead and please underwrite my IPO now. Does he have a point here? How do you think about the financials of these companies as they move towards going public? Yeah, I don't think he has much of a point here. I don't understand the whole case he's making. But I think it's basically that these companies can't go public because if they were public, they would get sued for their products causing harm.
Starting point is 00:52:43 And, you know, I wish the public markets were that effective a check on corporate malfeasance, but we have pharmaceutical companies, airlines, you know, all manner of companies who have products that have risk attached to them that have gone public just fine. I think if and when Anthropic and Open AI decide to go public, they will go public. Banks will line up to underwrite them because guess what? It's going to be a trillion-dollar-plus IPO each time for both of those companies. So the fees that they make alone will be astronomical. These companies are not in bad financial shape.
Starting point is 00:53:16 People keep saying this, especially on the left, and I think it's a weird, like it just is out of touch with reality. Yes, these businesses are spending tons of money to train these models and put up data centers and all the rest of it. Yes, they are not profitable. But their revenue is growing faster than any companies in the history of capitalism. And we're sitting here thinking, oh, well, well, if you, you know, carry the one and, you know, subtract five. It doesn't pencil out and they can't go public. I think it's much better as a mode of analysis to assume that these companies are going to be extremely successful and less than until someone stops them from building the recursively self-improving superintelligence.
Starting point is 00:53:52 Yeah. My last question for you here is around some of the existential risk. So there was recently this report, let's put F5 here. Anthropic is now operating a lab that conducts biology experiments known as a wet lab, where, quote, obviously it's done under the auspices of trying to create, you know, cures for diseases. Sounds a lot like gain of function research, which is kind of the way I've been thinking about a lot of recursive self-improvement and some of the other developments within AI.
Starting point is 00:54:23 But talk through us, you know, do they really believe that they're doing it, much like with gain of function for good purposes? And do they even think, you know, Anthropic is supposed to be the company that thinks about risk and still presses forward with what I think is the most outright example of everyone being like, oh, I don't think we need any of that. Yeah, if they ever start experimenting on AI pangolins, I'm out of here. Hold on a second. But no, look, I think the term wet lab has a lot of baggage attached to it for obvious reasons.
Starting point is 00:54:57 Everyone remembers COVID. But this is the thing. These companies are serious and sincere about wanting AI to do science. They feel like they have to deliver on some of these benefits, like curing diseases and stopping certain forms of cancer. Because otherwise, people will just see this as the slop machines that just take your job and make your kid miserable and help them cheat in school. Like, that is the PR crisis that they see. So they actually do sincerely want to have their AI start curing diseases and making progress. But to do that, you need to automate the whole process.
Starting point is 00:55:33 You need to get the human bottlenecks out of the way, whether that's having faster clinical trials, you have to give them control of a wet lab so they can bring pipettes over and, I don't know, whatever they do in the wet lab, that has to move at the speed of AI rather than the speed of humans. So I think they're sincere.
Starting point is 00:55:51 I think it's high risk, but I think it's also potentially high reward. And I think if we want these people to do AI for science, which I personally do, I would rather them do that than the recursively self-improving superintelligence, we have to be okay, with a little bit of risk and things that might sound weird.
Starting point is 00:56:06 A few wet labs. Kevin, last question for you. There's been a lot of debate also about the current legal landscape and whether it is sufficient as currently in existence to hold these companies accountable for the harms that they do cause. So there's been a whole debate, a lot of antitrust folks involved. But just to use a hypothetical example, let's say there is a lab leak, an AI cause lab leak. from the Anthropic Wet Lab. Do we have the legal tools to hold Anthropic directly liable? Do we have the
Starting point is 00:56:42 legal tools to hold Open AI liable for their model breaking out of the sandbox and hacking, hugging face? You know, is that something that's already in existence and just needs to be enforced? Or do we actually need new laws specifically for those type of instances? I also think we need laws to regulate what the labs are doing themselves. I'm in favor of no recursive self-improvement, stopping the development, ban on superintelligence, but even, you know, putting those things aside, do we have some tools now where we could hold these CEOs accountable for the things that their models do? We do, but it's not enough, and I'll tell you why. So we have product liability laws in this
Starting point is 00:57:22 country that protect consumers, but those laws only apply to products that are sold to the public, and they also don't cover sort of extreme events. So like, like, say, there's an internal deployment at one of these companies, a model that's not been released to the public yet that goes off and does something. This is exactly what we saw in the hugging face attack, by the way. That was not a public model. So those product liability laws
Starting point is 00:57:47 would have a hard time covering something like that. It's also going to be cold comfort. If there's a lab leak of an AI-engineered pandemic that kills millions of people, we're not going to be worried about how can we sue the AI company, right? Like I would much rather prevent the harm then be able to reclaim some economic damages from the harm after it happens.
Starting point is 00:58:08 So the argument they would say, Kevin, is that if the threat of that was real, then they would take the precautions to make sure that the lab leak didn't happen in the first place. I don't buy it. Like airlines fly planes all the time. What keeps them honest is not the fact that they could be sued for a plane crash, is that there's a regulatory regime. It's that there's the FAA. it's that they're mandated to do maintenance checks
Starting point is 00:58:33 on all the planes before every flight. We have laws and regulations in place to keep people safe when they are flying in an airplane, but we have zero laws, zero laws that are tailored to this situation where you have AI companies in San Francisco building godlike super intelligences. They can do that much more easily
Starting point is 00:58:50 than United Airlines can get a 747 off the ground. Very well said. Also, we should not want to, because if we live purely in the world of liability, it's like that famous scene fight club where it's like, well, if the cost of paying out dead victims exceeds what it would cost to fix the problem itself, only then will we actually fix the problem. Otherwise, it's easier to just pay the fine as we've seen throughout history. So anyway, very interesting. Kevin,
Starting point is 00:59:19 well, excited to have you on relatively soon to talk about your new book whenever it comes out. But in the interim, congratulations on the podcast. Everybody go subscribe. I believe it's launching very soon. There'll be a link down. down in our description. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks, guys. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:59:36 I'm going to be out for the rest of the week. So Ryan's in, you know, so you can all subscribe and all of that, but I'll be on next week. I'll see that. Hey, everyone. It's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas Podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends,
Starting point is 01:00:05 Paul Rudd, Michael Bublay, Seth Myers, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Ashton Earl. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone what to do. Okay, well, control is a harsh word. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving advice. Listen to Hey Jonas on America's number one podcast network, IHeart.
Starting point is 01:00:22 Follow Hey Jonas and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. Hey Jonas is sponsored by Edible Arrangements. Order yours today at edible.com. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart.
Starting point is 01:00:41 And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different. references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast.
Starting point is 01:01:10 The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween.
Starting point is 01:01:35 Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human

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