Morning Brew Daily - Musk's Glitchy Trump Interview & People Falling in Love with ChatGPT's Voice?

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Episode 386: Neal and Toby recap Elon Musk’s glitchy interview with Republican Presidential candidate Trump on his platform X. Then, the FDA disapproves of MDMA as a treatment for PTSD and users of the new ChatGPT voice mode are reporting the tool is breaking protocol…and breaking hearts. Next, Burning Man ticket sales aren’t selling out like they used to. Has the notorious festival lost its cultural relevance? Meanwhile, Blink Fitness files for bankruptcy, signaling a struggle for budget gyms. Lastly, now that the Olympics have been handed off to LA, the traffic-ridden city pledges to make it a ‘no-car’ Games. And a survey shows many think they can make the Olympics if they start training now. Good Luck.  Checkout https://beehiiv.link/morning-brew-daily and get a 30 day free trial and also 20% off 3 months with code BREW  Get your Morning Brew Daily T-Shirt HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-radio-t-shirt?_pos=1&_sid=6b0bc409d&_ss=r&variant=45353879044316  Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Consider this comparison. PWC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PWC points to a clarity issue. Even for CEOs, it's hard to tell what's AI hype, what's reality, and where this tech can make a tangible difference. Learn where AI can actually make an impact and what successful adoption looks like at

pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brewaI. Good morning, Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freyman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, another Jim Chain

filed for bankruptcy. What did I tell you all about skipping leg day? Then MDMA therapy just had its role slowed by the FDA. It's Tuesday, August 13th. Let's ride. Happy International Left Handers Day to all the

South Paws listening to this, which should be about 10% of you, if you're representative of the general population. Look, modern society was not designed with you in mind. Spiral notebooks, scissors, those desks in lecture halls. It's a Ritey's world and you're just living in it. But you've managed to overcome these hurdles and produce some of the greatest minds around, including Oprah, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Bart Simpson, and Dantrell Willis. So enjoy your day because the other 364 belongs to Ritees. I do just want to get a shout out to the animal kingdom though because it's full of lefties. So guerrillas are about 75% right-handed, but orangutans are 66% left-handed. Kangaroos tend to be southpaw,

so think of that next time you're boxing one. And then the common octopus, even though it has eight technicals, actually does have a favored technical. You could claim that as a tentacle. You could claim that as a left-hander if you wanted. But then I also looked at what's the most frequency of left-handedness in the animal kingdom. It comes from parrots. Studies have shown that about 90% of parrots use their left foot to pick things up. So you're in good company if you're a lefty. Now a word from MBD sponsor, Beehive. Neil, did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Well, considering that I was a history major and then got a master's in urban planning, I wouldn't say it was necessarily top of mind. That said, I did write for my school newspaper. Yeah, I guess you

took a circuitous route towards the brew, but I feel like you would have thrived in college if a platform like Beehive had been around. For sure. If you would have given me the ability to set up my own newsletter, the sky would have been the limit. Maybe my route would have been a little smoother. See, that is why I love telling you all about Beehive. It gives everyone and anyone the opportunity to just get their thoughts down on the page or start a multi-million dollar company like Morning Brew. I think the coolest use case for Beehive that I have seen is starting a family newsletter to keep you and your extended family connected. That's exactly what I mean. Give people like College Neal the tools and you never know what they'll

do. Oh, college, Neil. You would have loved Beehive. If you want to check it out too, head to Beehive.com slash brew. That's B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com slash brew to get a 30-day free trial, plus 20% off three months with Code Brew. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Last night, Elon Musk and Donald

Trump solidified their bromance with a conversation on Musk's platform X, a sign that Musk is pulling out all of his business levers to help get Trump elected in November. It was not smooth sailing. The space, X's audio feature, suffered technical difficulties and the talk was delayed for 40 minutes, which was reminiscent of Ron DeSantis' botched presidential campaign rollout on X last year. But once it got going, you can see why the two former adversaries have developed a close relationship. They both railed against illegal immigration and believe the U.S. is on a path to collapse. Musk repeatedly brought up. up the idea of creating a government efficiency panel to audit how taxpayer money was spent and

asked Trump if he could be on it. Trump said, I'd love it. And Elon and Trump didn't appear to let their biggest disagreement get between them, electric vehicles. Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is obviously a huge proponent of electric vehicles and clean energy, while Trump has dismissed climate change and said EV owners should rot in hell. Last week, Trump changed his tune saying, I'm for electric cars. I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly. Toby, how did X do last night? Well, it did not do very well. The delay was a tough look for everyone involved.

Musk claimed a distributed denial of service attack happened that overwhelmed the company's servers. That said, people did start pushing back immediately and said, huh, it's very unlikely that the rest of the site, the rest of X, would be functioning properly, except for this particular space. He did say in a series of follow-up post that they had tested the system of, to 8 million concurrent listeners on Monday. But then when the interview began, there was only about 915,000 people listening to the space, and yet somehow it wasn't working.

So if this was a test case for not only Elon and Trump on the campaign trail, a test case for X itself, X did not pass the test. For sure. And X's CEO, Linda Yakorino, was hyping up this conversation ahead of time as well. This was a big moment for the platform. But in good news for the platform, one of the... their biggest accounts appears to be back. Remember, Trump was kicked off X for two years after January 6th, and he started his own social media company called Truth Social, where he has

been posting nonstop for many years now. And now it looks like he's back on X, where he has a much bigger audience. He has 89 million followers as of Monday night. And on Truth Social, he has just 7.5 million truth social stock, of course, dipped yesterday as Trump returned. return to the platform. It remains to be seen how much he's going to post yesterday. I think he posted like eight times, including a long video, which was an ad for his campaign. So we'll see whether this marks Trump's return to Twitter slash X, where he really has such a large audience and wielded a lot of power and influence during his presidency and during the campaign in 2015. We'll see if he repeats that ahead of the election in November. And then now let's dig into that.

relationship that you spoke about between Trump, Elon Musk, EVs, climate change, because that is probably the biggest source of tension right now. It led to a little bit of an awkward moment last night because Trump is kind of outwardly downplayed climate change saying how there's plenty of fossil fuels left and Elon half-heartedly pushes back but also says that, okay, I guess you're right. So it is this not perfect marriage by any sense. And it is kind of, there's definitely going to be tension around Elon's agenda, especially if you are a Tesla shareholder listening in this and saying, all right, Elon, how are you going to make these two sides of you marry and create value for Tesla? Because it would, if Trump goes ahead and gets rid of that EV tax

credit, for instance, how is that going to impact Tesla's business? Elon says it would hurt his competitors more than it would hurt Tesla. So definitely an uneasy relationship, especially when it comes to electric vehicles and climate change. Yeah, especially, you know, Trump has pledged to get rid of a lot of incentives and subsidies that have to do with EVs and clean energy. But that is a huge part of Tesla's business. Tesla sells regulatory credits to GM, Stalantis,

all these other automakers because they hit their emissions targets. They have some left over. And through this scheme that has been created, they can sell those to automakers that don't hit their targets. and they brought in $9 billion since 2018 through these regulatory credits. It was a huge part of their business. They brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue last quarter alone. So it does appear, I mean, generally it appears like Elon Musk has ambitions beyond Tesla.

So if I'm a Tesla shareholder, I'm like, well, maybe he's not even in the EV game anymore. He's talked to big game about AI and all these other projects that are going on. And I think his growing abrasive Trump may be another sign that just EVs are not a major priority for him anymore. There were some tough pills to swallow for those in the field of psychedelic medicine in the past few days. First, the FDA decided not to improve MDMA-assisted therapy as a treatment for PTSD, asking the drug maker who organized the trial, Lycos therapeutics, for more studies around

the safety and efficacy of the treatment. Then three papers about MDMA-assisted therapy were pulled from a notable scientific journal for unethical conduct at one of the sites where the research took place. Several of the authors are affiliated with Lycos Therapeutics too, so it's been a not-so-fun couple of days over there. The one-two punch of a rejected clinical study and retracted papers have left the nascent industry in shock after years of building momentum. This would have been the first FDA authorized psychedelic therapy as well as the first new PTSD treatment in more than two decades to hit the market. But now the industry is almost set back to square one here. Yeah, I think the question right now is, is this.

a minor setback, or is this more of a tone-setting decision by the FDA to not approve MDMA for therapy as a treatment for PTSD? And that is the question the industry faces right now. Is this a Lycos problem specifically that has to do with this company and how they design their particular trial? Or is the FDA appear to be generally opposed to this experimental medication that a lot of people say shows a ton of promise for treating PTSD where we haven't gotten a treatment, a new treatment in a few decades, or is it a little more nefarious and can lead to severe side effects because you are hallucinating during this. You have a great dependency on the therapist when you go into these sessions. So I think that's what the industry is grappling with right now,

whether this is a short-term setback. And meanwhile, there's a bunch of other studies going on, or this is a much longer-term problem that it's going to have to wade through for many years. Let's dig into the actual study and why people were so bullish on this, because it did seem promising. So patients would receive the therapy. You get a capsule containing MDMA, but then you're also guided by a therapist through three, eight hour long sessions spread three to five weeks apart. Then there would also be 12 drug-free therapy sessions as a follow-up. And the results that they published were very promising, very surprising, almost too promising, if you ask some people.

In a phase three clinical trial, 71% of patients no longer had symptoms meeting the PTSD criteria. So it looked to be an overwhelming success, which is why there was so much momentum and so much almost euphoria around these studies. But the FDA has pushed back. They said that maybe that there were some data practices that weren't exactly kosher. And then also that they wanted to see more impact on how it impacted like the cardiovascular system. and other health effects.

So even though that the FDA did grant MDMA breakthrough therapy status, saying that it can now be recognized for its potential benefits, it looks like it still has a hill to climb in terms of actually getting that FDA stamp of approval. Yeah, they told this company to go back to the drawing board because they could not accept the data as it was. One of the main problems with this study was what is known as functional unblinding. And the fact is that if you're supposed to not be able to know whether you got the treatment or not. That is the gold standard of these types of clinical trials. But people knew whether they got

the MDMA or not, and that could affect their results or their self-reported results. And that's what the FDA did not approve of. They're like, you guys got to fix this. But then you had people pushing back in the other direction being like, this is, for these types of studies, this is a problem that's not just confined to MDMA or LICO, or this particular type, this specific study, because functional and blinding is something that happens all the time in these types of studies. People know whether they're getting a psychedelic or not. Yeah. Yeah. So that is a major question that Legos will have to figure out as it goes back to the drawing board and tries to do this study again. Remember a few months ago when OpenAI introduced its human-like voice feature

for ChatGBT, and we all thought, well, people are totally going to fall in love with that robot. Well, OpenAI just issued a report saying, yeah, people are totally going to fall in love with that robot. The AI startup has begun releasing its voice interface for chatGBT into the wild, and to accompany that rollout, it also issued a report on the safety risks of the feature. One of the risks it flagged is that some users could become emotionally attached to this voice and anthropomorphize it or perceive it in human terms. This is the movie Her Come to Life, like actually, during the testing of the model, open AI researchers noticed users talk to the voice chat GBT as if they had,

a relationship with it. People said stuff like, this is our last day together. In its report, OpenAI said users' relationships with the AI may reduce their need for human interaction, which could benefit people who are lonely, but could also damage healthy human connections. Toby, it feels like Pandora's box has officially been opened. Right. Everyone saw this coming. Let's be honest, because these voices not only sound human, they also have mastered the pauses and the filler words that humans use as well. They can respond with an average time of 320 milliseconds, which is exactly mirrors the conversation that we're having, although sometimes I think you're a little quicker than 320 milliseconds there. But right, we heard these voices. We heard them coming out.

There was the whole Scarlet Johansen debacle, or one of them sounded much like the actress. We knew that there was going to be these fears of people developing these deeper connections, especially in a post-pandemic society where a lot of people are struggling with loneliness and are willing to form these parissocial relationships. So I guess it's good that Open AI identified this and caught this in testing, but this was not something that blindsided really anyone. Yeah, I think there are two ways to look at this. You can say, oh, great, like Open AI is publishing these risk reports. They're having more transparency about this very potentially dangerous or scary or novel technology that is going into the wild. And they are making this move toward

transparency because a lot of safety execs have left this company. There are questions about whether it's pursuing profits over safety. And then the other side is like, well, look at what you've created. You've created this voice that can very much mimic a human. You've already have, you've already shown that people are getting attached to it in literally V1 of this product. So we are really entering a new phase that we're not prepared for of humans developing relationships with robots. And then the final red flag that popped out from this report was that on the it's very alarming is that a instance of a tester encountered a moment where the model yelled out no and then switched into a voice that mimicked hers it you can hear

this audio online it is actually extremely creepy where this this tester is talking to the model something switches in it and then it starts parroting her voice back to her and this they said was a an instance of a it's a edge case but sometimes an unauthorized voice will come out of of these models because of they said it was something to do with background noise that overrided like the presets of the model. So of course you have these images of like this Aladdin S, a genie AI voice just switching into different voices all the time, switching into accents and songs, sounds, whatever. It's very scary to think about. So these are two instances that come out. And again, you're right. That is a V1 model of this. So who knows what else is lying

on the other side of Pandora's box. Up next, is Burning Man even cool anymore? It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179 like the next grill three burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill

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In less than two weeks, tens of thousands of people will descend upon a barren spot in the Nevada Desert for the annual Burning Man Festival. But while there will surely be art exhibits and house music galore, the festival may be facing a shortage of one key resource. People. And that's what I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends, the lack of demand for Burning Man. this year. Typically, this event draws out a who's who of Silicon Valley, giving tech dignitaries a chance to be not so dignified

in a free-spirited desert free-for-all. And every year since 2011, the festival has sold out almost immediately. But this year, things are very different. The demand for tickets just isn't there. Organizers have reopened sales on a bid to boost attendance, offers to sell tickets

on second-hand sites, aren't getting any bites, and veteran burners are hesitant to return after last year's rainy and muddy debacle that left many stranded. Neil, Burning Man may have lost its fire. It might have, and there are many factors that could go into this. I mean, one is what you mentioned. People saw these images of 80,000 people stranded in the desert.

There were no toilets available. They were backed up for hours on end. There was mud and rain everywhere. It did not seem that fun. And those images were displayed all across social media. So if you were in edge case being like, hey, should I go to Burning Man? remember that, you're probably like, okay, I probably don't want to go.

Another thing is just something we've talked about a lot on the show, which is inflation and people have a choice about where they're going to spend their last week of August, and some things may be more attractive than others, and Burning Man costs $575 plus hundreds more in taxes just to get in. So you have a bunch of different factors going on here, and people have to make a decision about what they're doing, and they're like, well, I may be. take a vacation to Italy because the dollar is very strong right now, instead of going to Burning Man. And that may be what's going on. Another thing could be losing its cultural relevance

just a bit. You mentioned Silicon Valley is kind of taken over a little bit of the anarchist, avant-garde, you know, countercultural spirit of the original Burning Man. And people may not want to go there and be in that environment. They want that more anarchist spirit of the way it was founded in the 90s and it's become too mainstream, and then it becomes less cool when it becomes too mainstream. Yeah, when you're talking about it on podcasts, like Morning Brew Daily, then it's not as avant-garde and free-spirited anymore.

We're normies. But you're right. It has been just a tough few years. I mean, the event was canceled in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID pandemic. Some people went through their own Burning Man at the time, but it's just not had a lot of momentum recently. And then finally last year was supposed to be like this return to normalcy for it

as normal as Burning Man can be. And it just really went south because of these very heavy rains. I mean, we got those iconic videos of like Diplo and Chris Rock hitchhiking for miles through the desert in a bunch of mud. People have come out and said it didn't look as bad as it actually was. We had a good time. But, yeah, I think Burning Man might have hit its cultural peak. We'll only see in the coming years if it starts declining in importance in Silicon Valley.

And we'll see what the numbers look like this year. But for now, tickets are not selling very well. Yeah, if you want to go, I mean, he's. You can definitely grab them. Okay, blink twice if you went bankrupt. Okay, confirmed. The budget fitness chain blink filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, unable to regain its financial form after COVID restrictions,

walloped gyms four years ago. The company said it would keep its 100-plus locations up and running through bankruptcy proceedings as it tries to reposition its business and look for a buyer. If you're not from the seven U.S. states with a blink location, it was founded 13 years ago with the goal of democratizing deadlifts. Compared to other chains like Lifetime, it's much kinder on the wallet, with memberships ranging from $15 to $45 a month. Sure, you may not be able to drape yourself in a eucalyptus-scented towel

before hitting the infrared sauna, but you can still get a good pump in. And that formula seemed to be working pretty well. Over the last two years, Blinks revenue climbed 40%, mirroring the broader industry's solid bounce back from the pandemic, but costs rose even more than sales, leading Blink to blink first in this financial staring contest. Toby, you think Blink has a few more reps left in it, or is it time to hit the showers? It's just, and it's tough.

We call it the messy middle a little bit of gyms because you have on the very low end, the planet fitnesses of the world where it's just very cheap and is known as being a very cheap option. And then you go the complete opposite end of the spectrum. You have the equinoxes. You have the lifetimes of the world that have those eucalyptus scented towels. And Blink was just a little bit caught too far towards. the other end. The issue, too, is that the business model of gyms rely on people signing up and

then not necessarily coming to those gyms because they sign up more people that would lead to overcrowding. And Blink is kind of in that camp where they're trying to just get as many signups as possible. But Gen Z actually really, really loves the gym and attendance is way up to gyms. And that actually throws the business model a little bit out of whack. So they may have suffered from their own pandemic bounceback. They suffered from their own success. But yeah, there's always going to be demand for a lower-priced gyms, especially in a world of the, when you have so many higher-price options. Right, but we never thought that.

I mean, four years ago, if you, Toby, you always, if you said there will always be demand for gyms and lower-priced gyms. We would have been like, well, I don't know because everyone's working out at home. And no one saw the bounce back in gyms coming, according to surveys during the peak pandemic. People said that they miss gyms just as much as they miss their family and friends. gyms have become a place of social gathering for people much like run clubs, especially the younger generation. So, you know, a bunch of these gyms that are being successful now,

the equinoxes of the world, the lifetimes, are creating more social spaces for people to come and meet others and hang out. And that has been a recipe for success. So I wonder if Blink, as it's going through its bankruptcy proceedings, it's going to look at some of the more successful chains and be like, We're creating more of a hangout. We work, you know, co-working space vibe where people can hang out. And, you know, that might be something we want to lean into more.

By the way, this could just be an Equinox group issue as well because it owns Blink. And they have been struggling with a very large debt load. They raised $1.8 billion of funding back in March to refinance $1.2 billion of debt. So maybe like Blink was doing okay, but since it's part of this broader group, it was just the one that hit the chopping block when they came to trying to get their finances in order. The Olympics are over, which means we are on to 2028 in L.A. It also means that despite the feats of athleticism, you just witness, some of you are daydreaming about your ability to feature in L.A. in four years. Yes, you probably know a guy or a gal who, after a few drinks, says, oh, you give me four years to train for badminton, and I totally be at the Olympics. Well, thanks to you gov, we have the exact data on how many of those delusional folks are out there.

The polling org surveyed the British public to see how many of them thought they had a chance of making the Olympics in four years if they started training today. And a quarter of them thought they could. Across 25 different sports, the number one answer for which event they thought they could tow the line in was the 10 meter air rifle. Archery, badminton, table tennis, and rowing followed closely behind. But here is where the Brits truly lost the plot. the next most common answer was the 100 meter dash. Sorry, Nigel, I don't think you and your mates are running down at Noah Liles anytime soon. Neil, I love these surveys.

It is so nice to see people with this level of optimism in their lives. Okay, I'm going to put it out there. I think that given dedication and spending four years or even longer on a particular sport, you could conceivably get pretty good. the problem is they're not going to actually go down and train. So I'm saying, yes, it's fine to believe that you could conceivably

get really good at something, but the problem is, you know, you're not going to apply yourself. All of these is conditional like, if I were to apply myself. But the difference between Olympians and the rest of us is that they actually train for 10 hours a day and we don't and we play video games. I think

that you're right in the fact that we don't have the discipline level, but I think you're glossing over what they're applying themselves do. Even the 10-meter air rifle, if you just put it in context, the person who won it, it's like shooting a tip of a pencil from the three-point line and missing by like 1.5 millimeters or something. So it is a lot harder than it obviously looks on television. They did also the survey, I love when these surveys comes out. It digs into the differences in what men and women are more confident in. And as a whole, men are vastly overestimate their abilities at a greater

rate than women do, except for in one event. And that was the 100 meter breaststroke where women were oddly much more confident in their abilities to make that than men were. I have to just put it out there, though, that any event actually requiring any level of physical ability, you just have no chance in it. I mean, these people are so far, they are superhuman what you're seeing on television. And I say that as someone who has swum competitively before, has run competitively before, It actually just opens your eyes to how much faster they are.

So you can take the discipline route. I'm just saying that everyone in Britain is absolutely completely delusional in their ability to estimate their ability. All right. If you want to get Toby fired up at 6.30 a.m. in the morning to show him a starvy of people who think they could make the Olympics. Meanwhile, we're on to L.A. and the Olympics made their presence known in a big way yesterday. I think that was him. I think that was the five rings landing in L.A. Making a 4.4 magnitude earthquake in L.A. that shook the ground there.

So we hope everyone was okay. And yeah, we can't wait for four more years. All right, that is all the time we have for this show. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any feedback, send an email to morning brew daily at morningbrew.com. We are prepared for anything. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer.

Raymond Loo is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Ed Lewis is our technical director. Bill Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup is skipping Burning Man this year. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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