Pivot - Barbenheimer, AI in the Newsroom, and Scott Doubles Down

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Kara's got the latest from the Barbie premiere, where YES she saw Mr and Mrs. Gaetz. Scott has some more thoughts on who the real enemy is in the Hollywood strikes (and it's not him!) The government has Big Tech in its crosshairs with the latest proposed M&A guidelines, Google pitches an AI news writing product, and Scott really does think Trump will drop out. But above all, stick around for the listener mail from 10-year-old Henry, who's ready to make some money on the stock market. We’ve got some more listener mail episodes coming your way soon, so send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. How you doing? How's Aspen, Scott? How's Aspen? As you might expect, it's wonderful. A lot of hikes with my 15-year-old boy where over the course of three hours, he'll say seven words, but they're, you know, that's more than usual, so. Yeah, that's typical.

We saw a bear yesterday, which was exciting. Oh, we went paddle boarding. We saw- What do you mean you saw a bear? Wait, wait, wait, wait. Back up. You saw a bear where? Near you? Saw a bear. Actually, in the community we're staying in. What? We saw a bear. Wait, wait, wait. Back up. You saw a bear? Where?

Near you? Saw a bear. Actually, in the community we're staying in. This little beautiful brown bear. And even more exciting, we were paddle boarding. And they tell you, the guides say, if you see moose, be very quiet. They're fine, but you don't want to rattle them. And of course, we come across a brother and a sister moose.

And I'm like, oh, my God, look at the moose. No at the moose. But they're beautiful creatures. They are. Okay. I do not want you to, Demi, have to come get your pieces in Aspen, like pick you up as a moose or a bear attacks you. It's not something I want to do. Pivot co-host trampled to death by moose. Trampled to death. It just feels right. If I'm going to go, that does feel right. It does feel right. So I wish you would not, that does feel right. It does feel right. So I wish you would not yell at a moose. Can you not do that? It would be really helpful.

I'm glad you're out in nature. That's really nice. That's really lovely. It's really nice. I had dinner with Stephanie Ruhl last night. She's here for some security conference or something. And absolutely the best thing about the evening was someone came up and recognized me and Aunt Stephanie made my night.

Absolutely made my night. No. Made my night. Yeah. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about today. There's a lot going on. I've been busy and we'll talk about it in a second. Today, we'll talk about how antitrust enforcers are coming for big tech with a new set of plans to block mergers. There's also a new Google product that's terrifying journalists everywhere. Not really. And we get a listener mail from a 10-year-old boy, so his parents will have to cover his ears until that part of the show. But first, the Barbie movie comes out today, and Matt Gaetz's wife doesn't think you should watch it. I actually went to the same screening as Ginger and Matt Gaetz. They were sitting right near me.

Posted photos of her and her husband on the red carpet at the premiere, which was at the British Embassy for the film, while giving her not-so-positive review among her complaints. It, quote, neglects to address any notion of faith or family, which is weird because it's about dolls, and disappointingly low T from Ken. I don't feel this is correct, having seen it. And by the way, they were both laughing quite a bit during the movie. Just FYI. Just FYI. What did you think of the movie? I loved it. I thought it was great. I thought it was funny. That's interesting. Why? It's deep and shallow at the same time, if that makes sense. It's very

funny. There's all kinds of kitschy stuff. There's all these throwbacks to old movies, whether it's The Truman Show or Singing in the Rain or Busby Berkeley musicals or, you know, a lot of The Wizard of Oz. So it's got a lot of that funness and the costumes are fantastic. There's a lot of very funny jokes at making fun of feminism. It makes fun of woke men. It makes fun of manly men. It makes fun of Mattel quite a bit. So it has a nice sense of humor about everyone.

And the whole thing about low T from Ken, the whole point is to talk about what Ken really is, which is an accessory to Barbie. As my wife Amanda says, I thought it was really well done and adorable. There's a few, you know, kind of goofy notes. At one point, America Ferrera has to give kind of a feminist-y speech that I would have, they didn't need it. They were making those points without hitting you over the head with it.

But otherwise, Greta Gerwig is a gifted, gifted filmmaker. And I have to say, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were fantastic. He steals the show in a lot of ways because he's got this kind of boneheaded character. Reminded me a great deal of you, Scott. Thanks for that. No problem. I hear that a lot about me and Ryan Gosling.

I get that a lot. Yes, I mean, in this role as Ken. You're a Ken. If you call me a Karen, I'm going to call you a Ken from now on. And he just is great. He steals the show because he's got so many great outfits, et cetera. And you call me a Karen, I'm going to call you a Ken from now on. And he just is great. He steals the show because he's got so many great outfits, et cetera.

And you also saw Oppenheimer, right? Yes, I saw Oppenheimer too. Yeah. Which was very heavy and very beautiful and good. It's not a musical comedy. It's not. It's a lot.

Let me just say it's long and it's complex and there's 103 million characters and topics and science and politics. It's just, you need to go in well-rested if you want to see this film. I took Alex with me, who loved it. He couldn't even process it by the end. He's like, I got to think about it for a while.

Beautifully done, as usual, from Chris Nolan. But it's not a summer movie, let me just say. It doesn't feel summer. It feels deep in the fall and the dark times. But it was great. I see barbie in the summer i would see this at chris not christmas in the fall so that's how i think are you going to go see i'm not saying barbie because matt gates's wife i didn't even know he was married um yes he's married to palmer lucky's sister i just can't get past the fact why do we give a flying fuck what Matt Gaetz thinks about a movie? I don't. He, of course, took a...

There's a trans Barbie there, and he made a slap at it. He shouldn't go to these movies. He knew just what was... He was using it for his own purposes. Yeah, why is he there? I don't know. Two seats away was Linda Carter, and that was a fantastic meeting. Oh, we love Linda Carter. Oh my god,

she's gorgeous, funny, just exactly like she is on Twitter. I was like, oh, my God, Matt Gaetz, ew. And then I went, oh, Linda Carter, yay. So that was the whole thing of it. Are you going to see it? You're not going to see Barbie at all. Interesting.

I don't. I very rarely go to the movies. I'm taking my boys to see Your Recommendation, Mission Impossible tomorrow. Yes, it's great. In Westwood, where I grew up, and walk around. And we're going to go to the movie theater I worked at in high school. And then we're going to do a tour. Oh, so you're going to go to Los Angeles.

Okay, cool. And we're going to do a tour of UCLA. But I'm going to see Mission Impossible. And then I cannot wait for Oppenheimer. I'll probably go alone. No one in my family wants to see that movie. But I just find him in the situation absolutely fascinating. And I also think, I do think it's the kind of thing, and I say this without having seen it, that kids in high school in history should, if it's true to the depiction and they haven't woked it up like every other fucking movie that comes back and revises history.

Let me guess, he's actually, he's, I'm not even going to go there. No, he's complex. He's a womanizer. He made all kinds of, he's, his history. Let me guess. He's actually, he's, I'm not even going to go there. No, he's complex. He's a womanizer. He made all kinds of, he's, his wife, I'll tell you, Emily Blunt, she was superb. She was superb. So was Florence Pugh. They're not big roles, but boy, do they, everyone's great. There's a lot of people in this movie.

Robert Downey Jr., I've never seen such good acting from him. Really, truly. He's superb too. Yeah, I think Christopher Nolan is, I think the closest thing to a perfect movie that I've seen in the last 10 years is Dunkirk. And I think World War II movies, I mean, I thought 1917 was spectacular.

And I'm just, I'm so excited about Oppenheimer that I'm literally waiting. Good. All right, go see it. And then we'll talk about it next week. One of the things that was, it's long. You have to really commit to a Chris Nolan movie. And one of the things he does, sometimes his movies, you're like, what's happening? Like Tenet, I still don't understand. I didn't get it either. I agree. I was like, I couldn't even follow it. And this one has so many people, so many topics, so much stuff.

It's like hard, right? He manages to keep it going and also you understanding it more than he usually does. And he needed to do that because this is based on a book called American Prometheus. And it's a very difficult, I readheus. And it's a very difficult. I read that book. It was a very difficult book. Good, great book, but difficult to read and to keep track of. And he does a great job and keeps it interesting.

And it's, you know, it's hard to make a movie about nuclear fission and make it fascinating, but it is. Anyway, do you think the ongoing writers and actors strikes is going to is going to with the last minute publicity is going to have an effect on box office? It doesn't help. I mean, because you summarized it and I hadn't thought about it. And that is if you want to be supportive of labor, and I think a lot of people have for the right reasons are very empathetic. Does that mean you go see it or you don't see it? And show me a star out taking Instagrams of themselves saying that they stand with the riders. And I'm going to show you someone who made $27 million last year.

Yeah, yeah. And so I don't – anyways, your question sounded pregnant with a comment. No, what I'm saying is I just interviewed Fran Drescher. It's on with Kara Swisher. She's the head of SAG. And I asked her that question. And she said, no, we're not asking people not to go yet. You know, not to go.

That's not in our interests for that to happen. Agreed. So she did seem to say that. At the same time, this publicity matters. The whole cast of Oppenheimer walked out of the premiere in London. It's not, didn't do the premiere. Haunted House for Disney, they didn't go. For Barbie, they were very

aggressive. And one of her allegations was, and of SAG is, that they asked for an extension, the studios, and then did nothing in order to keep those publicity things going ahead of the movies, Mission Impossible, Barbie, and Oppenheimer. Well, I'd just like to say to the virtue signaling poser actors that on behalf of TikTok and the Spanish film industry, thank you. You're feeling very right wingy. Are you hanging out with right wing people? You're feeling very insulting and woke people. Like, what's going on? Let me be clear.

Let's assume that the people actually representing these unions want to serve their members well. And that their aims are the right aims, that people that are talented and working hard who wake up one day and find a loss of job security, even a loss of an ability to get health insurance because of the way that the health industrial complex makes it almost impossible for people to get insurance unless they go to work for a traditional corporate job, which people increasingly are not doing. Last week, in one day, in one day, when Microsoft announced it was bundling AI into Microsoft Office, it increased its market capitalization $134 billion. And the unions going after Paramount? The unions and the studios need to find the biggest, baddest,

ugliest law firm in the world. There's a lesson in here. I did mention this to Fran Drescher. There's a lesson in here, and it's a good lesson for young people. A decent strategy for economic security is to always find the biggest pile of money and stand as close to it as possible. It is the reason why talented entrepreneurs are moving to Riyadh. It's the reason why you always want to work for people who are rich, because quite frankly, it's just more difficult for them to not pay you well. And you want to find companies that are worth a lot of money. Get to the biggest pile. The biggest pile-

This is the only reason I'm hanging out with you, but go ahead. The biggest pile in the world right now is companies leveraging AI. And the notion that they're going to extract, they're trying to squeeze blood from a rock. I have been to this movie. In 2008 on the board, we were so fascinated with Google and tech that we thought our competition was the Globe or the Tribune or the LA Times. Our competition, our enemy was Google. And at that moment, we should have all bound together, including the Nikkei, the FT, the Murdochs, the new houses, and we should have

presented one unified front to Google and said, if you want to crawl anything from GQ to Vanity Fair to the New York Times to the Boston Globe, you have to pay us an enormous licensing fee. And we could have played them off of Microsoft where Bing was still in the game. This is that moment right now. Well, Viacom did go after YouTube, of course. But yes, I agree with you. I agree with you. I think it's going to be tough.

But we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Scott's mad, people. Get focused. Focus on the rich people. I want them to make more money. And this is how you make more money. You have a legitimate legal claim that gunks up Microsoft and Open and ChatGPT's ability

to steal your content, and then you get an omnibus licensing deal. All right. Okay. We'll see where that goes. They're not going to do it. They're focused on each other right now. Another story interesting, speaking of journalists and the president of Stanford University, Mark Tessier-Levine will resign following a controversy over research papers he co-authored. A months-long investigation of the neuroscientist

research revealed, quote, serious flaws. And while he may not have intentionally included them, he didn't correct the mistakes when concerns were brought up. Tessier-Levine now says he'll ask for three papers to be retracted, two to be corrected. The investigation was prompted by the reporting of an 18-year-old freshman at Stanford Daily, Theo Baker, who is investigations editor. He's also the son, just, I should be remiss, the New York Times kind of stuck it down at the bottom, a very well-known New York Times reporter, Peter Baker, and also Susan Glasser of New Yorker,

very famous journalists. As a result of the reporting, Baker and fellow student journalists earned the publication of 2022 Polk Award. Tessier Levine was first named president in 2016 and will remain a tenured professor in the biology department. Whoa, this was something else. This was sort of fascinating. I don't know if you read it. I did. I was paying attention to it. What do you think of this? I think it's, look, journalism can really have an impact, let's just say. I mean, and the fact that everyone sort of looked the other way and let this guy do this. You know, they didn't, I think the investigation didn't find that he meant to do it, but he knew it, right?

He found out about it later and sort of tried to paper it over, it seems. I just think, you know, just gumshoe journalism can sometimes be very effective. And adults let things fall through the cracks, right? These young student journalists did not. So, you know, Stanford's a very prestigious job, probably one of the more important university jobs in the world, I would guess. It has to have someone who's maybe not perfect, but certainly not cheating on their papers. That's not a very good message. maybe not perfect, but certainly not cheating on their papers. That's not a very good message. Yeah, I saw this and I had mixed emotions because one of the things that really bothers me about our society is there seems to be a lack of respect for institutions and academics. And that's sort of the

hard right move to fascism move, that the experts are actually anti-American and you can't trust them and you can just trust me because I'm the loudest, meanest voice in the room. And academic institutions have this wonderful gestalt in this DNA where no matter how trivial the research may seem or how esoteric, they pour over everything they say and say, can we say this? can we say this? I remember the head of the finance department at NYU came to my office at L2, and I was saying, our research shows that strong digital competence, we have this thing called this digital IQ index, correlates to increase in shareholder value. And I said, look at all the companies that have increased their shareholder value. And the head of the finance department, Professor David Yerman, came into my office and looked at the data and said, Scott, you can't say this. You we say that mRNA, there is no evidence that mRNA alters your DNA. When we say that, usually, historically, people on both sides of the aisle would stop and

take that statement seriously when it comes from an esteemed academic institution. So having really high standards makes sense. At the same time, at the same time in the lesson here is the following, it's not about doing something wrong that gets you in trouble. It's about how you handle it. If this individual, he didn't really cheat. If this individual had said, you know what, I fucked up, I'm retracting this, I'm correcting it, thank you for the good work, he would have been fine. thank you for the good work, he would have been fine. But my sense is he tried to downplay it. The key to any crisis is to acknowledge the issue, take responsibility for it, and then overcorrect. The thing I don't like about this is that the contrast in what many of our elected leaders say and do every day and get away with. Yeah, but that's not the bar, is it, Scott? That's not the bar. I get that, but there's something about a gotcha culture and something about us saying,

okay, the point is to try and bring people down as opposed to move the ball forward. You know, what's the net good here? I guess the net good is, you know, someone in this position acknowledges an issue when there's flaws in their research found, but it just definitely felt like a guardians of gotcha pen to me. I don't know.

I think having these standards for people in that position, we're not going to compare it. Oh, Matt Gaetz gets to do this. Donald Trump gets to do this. No, we shouldn't go down to that level. This guy should have passed up earlier, and this reporter did a good job pointing out that they didn't. And that's that. That's that. You can't be in a position like the head of Stanford, and you have to be excellent. Excellence, excellence, excellence. And when you see Oppenheimer, you'll see one of the issues was the sloppiness around secrecy. I think it's a great journalism

story, and I also think that he probably should have resigned, given how he behaved. Well, he did. He did. Yeah, he did. That's what happened. This is how it should work. If he was in any other industry, he would have doubled down and refused to leave. Yeah, doubled down. Okay, let's get to our first big story. The U.S. government just laid out new guidelines for approving mergers.

A proposal from the FTC and the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, consists of 13 updated criteria that agencies should use to decide whether to block a merger. One focus in this plan is to assess the effect it will have on competition for workers. Another is how a series of acquisitions, as opposed to one-offs, could harm competition. They would apply to both vertical and horizontal mergers. Again, these are guidelines for evaluation, not laws. The proposals are subject to a 60-day public comment period. Obviously, I have spoken to John Cantor, and he is going to come on my podcast next week to talk about these. You know, he's been trying

to figure out how to use the law as it exists in a new, fresh way that doesn't just look at vertical and horizontal mergers. That's the way they're applying it to try to give signals to companies and others of how they how they're operating and how what law they're using. And they're using very old laws. They're not using laws that probably we should update our antitrust bills, our antitrust laws, but we haven't. And so, obviously, they're trying to be more clear and trying to be more clever from a legal perspective so they win more cases. So what do you think about these? The thing that struck me was that probably the biggest impact that a presidential election has is on Supreme Court nominees.

that a presidential election has is on Supreme Court nominees, right? We're just facing a series of historic setbacks, in my view, for gay rights, women's rights, because Donald Trump was elected president and was able, through no fault of his own or no credit of his own, the timing was terrible, and I would argue the narcissism of RBG. But anyways, we've ended up in a situation, that is probably the most enduring feature or ramification of who is elected president. This will have a big, big impact based on who is elected, because most of this probably won't get any traction until the presidential election. And if Trump or a Republican wins, all of this goes away. Possibly, yeah.

Although Trump did the AT&T merger. It was under the Trump administration. But you're right. That was more because of CNN. That was because he hated CNN. That was literally, all that did was erode the credibility of the DOJ. Yeah. That was literally, all that did was erode the credibility of the DOJ. Anyway, this, a big impact. If a Republican is elected, I believe all of this goes away. And if a Democrat or Biden is reelected, this starts to get real momentum because the grinding gears of lawsuits

and these companies have huge resources. But my sense is all of this kind of groundwork they're laying starts to have a real impact in what would be the second term of a Democratic administration. If it's a Republican administration, I think all of this gets unwound. Well, we'll see. You know, in your last episode, you said you were rethinking Lita Khan. They have had a lot of victories, and Cantor did point this out to me. There have been a lot of victories, actually, including Simon & Schuster, the merger that was happening there. You know, I think they're working with the laws as they are, and so they're trying to find innovative new ways to think about it with the laws that are in place currently. That's my

impression. And also be very clear with businesses so that they can, you know, this is how we're going to do it, guys. So be aware that these are some of the laws we're going to rely on, including laws from 1910. Like, I think there's a couple of things that they're referring to. Because in the Simon & Schuster case, the judge did point to very old laws, you know, so they want to remind companies that there are ways to continue to impact that changes the thoughts, even though the laws don't change the way they approach it, including deciding whether it's a vertical, horizontal merger, which I think is an old way of looking at it, right?

That's an industrial age kind of thought. Because some of these things, when these tech companies, you know, this idea when they're buying a lot of things, it's not really clear that it's vertical and horizontal is the issue. It's that they have a larger impact down the line or that, you know, that you can't do things without, you know, if Amazon moves into certain areas, it has a different effect just by one purchase, but that it may be part of a pattern. So that's, it just was interesting. The writers and actors, the writers at least have suggested the Justice Department should tackle Hollywood mergers too

between entertainment and news companies. Now they're pointing specifically to the coverage that Strike is getting on news networks owned by Disney, which owns ABC, Warner Brothers, which owns CNN and Fox. They think it's being biased towards the studios. I have not seen evidence of that necessarily. I haven't watched it closely enough, but I don't think that's the case. You know, it's an interesting question of those, because I think those companies are too small. A lot of people think they're too small. Oh, those companies absolutely need to bulk up to have a unified front against, again, their true enemy, which is big tech. And I would push back. I think the coverage has been very sympathetic, and it usually is, to labor. There's about 150 million people that work, which is shocking given there's

350 million citizens. But 150 million people work, 135 of them are subject to just pure supply and demand. They don't have Fran Drescher giving indignant speeches. So, the majority of America is actually, in my opinion, surprisingly empathetic, given that 89% of them aren't represented by a union, to labor. And I would argue the majority of the coverage has been very sympathetic to the writers and the actors' concerns. Well, except for you. Except for you. Well, here's the thing. The truth has a nice ring to it. I know. Sorry. That was awfully arrogant.

That was, but I'm going to let you say it. I know. Sorry. That was awfully arrogant. That was, but I'm going to let you say it. I want to say I'm on the side. I'm on the side. I want people to make more money. I really do. I empathize. I think there's dignity in work. I think America, the brand that is America, it's about liberty. It's about courage. It's about generosity. And it's also about work. Americans work. We work a lot. We work hard. We're very innovative. There has to be dignity in it. But when you look at the act, the issue here is income inequality, not who's making more in front of the camera or behind the camera, because the reality is the highest paid actors make as much as the highest paid studio heads. But the highest paid actors are much more sympathetic.

And when they get dropped off in their mailbox at the strike line for seven minutes to get photos and say, I stand with the riders, and then they meld back to their home in the Hollywood Hills, it just rings hollow for me. What we need is public policy that says anyone who works should have access to healthcare. Any woman that works or any family that works should have access to universal pre-K. Anybody that works should get $25 an hour full stop. And then above that, I got to be honest, I think it's supply and demand. And I think all you're doing, I just don't think they want to face a reality that we probably don't need 185,000 actors. All right. All right. We're going to go with it. In case, in these merger guidelines,

because I think that they're trying to work how they can with the laws they have and try to be more creative. This is an attempt to be more creative and very clear to companies so they know when the Justice Department will act and how it will act, which I think is a credit to them. Obviously, they still need new antitrust law going forward, but to take care, because I think our antitrust laws, as you and I both think, are part of an era that doesn't exist anymore. So we'll see where it goes. We'll see where it goes, but it has to be a little more sophisticated and work with the laws that exist now. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about AI and more

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Google has demoed the product, which is called Genesis internally. What a name. For execs at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and News Corp, it's reportedly being pitched as a sort of personal assistant for journalists, automating some tasks like headline writing and suggesting different writing styles. According to New York Times, some executives who saw Google's pitch described it as, quote, unsettling. assistant for journalists, automating some tasks like headline writing and suggesting different writing styles. According to New York Times, some executives who saw Google's pitch described it as, quote, unsettling.

Google spokesman Jen Kreider said these tools are not intended to and cannot replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating, and fact-checking their articles. I don't know. I don't know. I haven't seen it. I can imagine it. As you know, I got into a fight with some journalists who didn't want AI to write headlines. I thought that was perfectly fine. It depends on how far this goes. I haven't seen it. What are the pluses and minuses for the industry here? Because this comes at a time, as you know, when news publishers around the world

are saying they want a slice of Google's revenue. Australia put pressure on Google and Meta in 2021. They're now paying $140 million a year into Australian journalism, mostly Rupert Murdoch, Uncle Satan, presumably. What do you think about this? I feel like you're going to forget more about journalism than I'm ever going to know. What were your thoughts when you saw this? I think some of it could be tools, headline writing, for example. I got into quite a fight with someone. I was like, this is not where we draw the line. If they do a good job at it, it should be automated, just like a lot of things are. Certain stories, certainly, earnings. I don't

know why people have to write them. It's stupid. It's a stupid waste of resources when you could be devoted to other things. I used to have to write earnings all the time. I never understood it. It's a plug and play. It's almost like a press release, right? In some ways, unless you have something, then you could go and write the analysis of it that I don't think AI can do. I think what they scrape in order to get it, if they scrape all my stories, I think AP just signed with ChatGPT to put some of its archives in there. It'll help, I think, chat GPT more than AP, presumably. I think the idea of their content being used to train

generative AI for free, and the Times, and I've spoken to Meredith Levin about this, who's the CEO of the New York Times. I've spoken to a lot of journalism executives. The Times has said in an internal memo that AI companies should, quote, respect our intellectual property. Nobody wants to be resold their own content, right? Like, there's not that much that needs automation. Some of it does, for sure. What do you think? The question is how do you leverage it and then who's making money and to what extent do you deserve a portion of those proceeds? So I use ChatGP. I'm writing my No Mercy No Malice post

this Friday is about a theme I write a lot about, struggling young men, but I'm trying to move to a series of solutions or proposals. And I'm literally after this podcast, I'm bombing to the airport taking my boys to see Universal Hollywood as bait such that then we go see my dad. And I just don't have time to finish this thing. And I read it and it's a bit of a mess and I've drafted it. And I kept telling ChatGPT I need a great closing paragraph around the struggles that young men face. And I give it a ton of prompts. I spent a lot of time on it.

And it came back with just vanilla blah. I mean, it just isn't very good. But throughout the article, I would say, can you give me four stats that help explain or the underlying drivers that help explain that three out of four deaths of despair are men? You know, suicide, drunkenness, opiates. Do you know that's accurate? That's my issue is how do you know it's accurate? Well, you have to fact check, but what it'll do is it'll give you four or six reasons of why this is a multidimensional problem and why young men are dying in a much faster clip of deaths of despair than women. And you learn from it. And you do need to fact check it, but it'll prompt some really interesting ideas and thoughts. Right. It's like the library lady at the Washington Post. Many years ago, they had library ladies that would go get the clips, right? And they knew so much stuff.

They literally cut out every story and put them in files, clips. They were called the clips. And you went and got them and read the clips before you wrote a story. That was the thing you did. Crazy when you think about it because you can look up everything now. the clips before you wrote a story. That was the thing you did. Crazy when you think about it, because you can look up everything now. But then you had the library lady, and it was always a lady, who would sort of go through, oh, you missed this one. What about this? She just had it in her head,

right? And so, it's kind of like doing research better, I guess, but you absolutely have to do your own fact-checking. That's one of the issues. And there's a lot of stories now of all these gender values getting less and less accurate. Well, they hallucinate. They call it hallucinations. Not just that. It's like the numbers. There was just something I saw, and I haven't finished reading the study yet, but they're getting not just hallucinations, just wrong, just spewing out inaccurate information, or less reliable. And I think that's happened on Google. Like you don't find quite the, you know, ultimately the more you put in, the more stuff you have to sift through, I think. I think that's kind of a dumb way of saying. What I used to do when I started writing these posts, I could bang them out in an hour and a half or two hours. An hour if I was drunk, because I would just write more fearlessly.

And then, and now we probably spend, somebody spends four to six hours just fact-checking everything. Because it used to be 400 people reading the post. Now it's 400,000. And literally, everything has to be bulletproof. And when I wrote my first book, my publisher would say, you know, I had 20 or 30 pages of notes slash references. And what took me a massive amount of time is that she came back and said, Wikipedia is not a credible source. Yes, that's right. Yeah. I was going to move over to Apple. The company says it's developing its own large language model. By the way, finally, Bloomberg reports that a small team of engineers have built the chatbot called Apple GPT. So far, the company is expected to make significant AI announcement until next year. The company prefers the term machine learning over artificial intelligence. You know, Steve Sanofsky, who's director of Microsoft, said if they don't get on this, they're doomed. I'm not so sure they're doomed, but this is something many people

are wondering where Apple has been. It's important that Apple at least looks like they're busy in this area. Meanwhile, for Meta, they're taking the rare step of giving away AI tech. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg announced he released the source code for their large language model. Of course, they're trying to develop these products faster. I don't know how you feel about Apple coming in into the market. Apple is the ultimate example of, we talk about innovators in the context of it being a positive thing. But if you look at true innovators, the folks that do things first, whether it was Xerox and object-oriented computing, whether it was, I forget who invented the first MP3, but it wasn't Apple. Apple defines the term,

the second mouse gets the cheese. They lay in wait, they watch stuff, they let it play out, they let the pioneers get mud on their face and arrows in their back, and then they come in with something cleaner and more friendly. And with a consumer application that fits, you know, that really solves a problem. And they make a shit ton of money. They're, you know, Apple being behind, Apple is purposely behind. They wait and they want to be thoughtful about what they come out with. So I don't, whatever they do, I would guess it's a more elegant, utile, and consumer friendly version of what everyone else is doing. But the fact, they're not late.

They're late to everything. That's what they do. They don't grab as much data. Like, Musk is going to train using Twitter data. Apple does not grab that much data from you that it can use, right? They definitely keep it, which is interesting. Do they have the kind of large language models and data that others have? I don't know. I don't even know. I'm going to call

them actually. But is it your own data set or is it going out and looking at publicly available data sets? Right. That's the thing. And so, and they're, you know, privacy is their thing, right? It's their thing. So, that'll be interesting. But these companies are moving, as you said, fast forward fast. And these other companies are left behind. That is 100% right. And so whether, as you were saying, now you're using it for your stuff, these journalism companies, if Apple's doing it, Facebook's doing it, Meta's doing it, et cetera, you need to be part of this.

And at the same time, use the laws that do exist around copyright and everything else to stick it to them because they're going to do the same thing they did the first time to you again. That's what I tell every journalism and media executive. I was like, they screwed you before, don't let them screw you the second time and own the field again, because they're the ones only capable of doing these large language models. And it's very expensive what they're doing right now. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. I don't know. By the way, just so you know, Scott, I just looked this up. Karl Heinz Brandenburg is a German electrical

engineer and mathematician who developed the audio data compression that became MP3, just so you know. Good to know. Good to know. Good to know. Yeah. So you know. Anyhow, but everyone else is taking advantage of his wonderful invention. Same thing with the people at Los Alamos.

So much has come out of there. Have you ever tracked down the inventor of anything to thank them? No. Who did you thank? I tracked down the inventor of Accutane. Oh, wow. I had terrible acne when- Really? I had terrible acne growing up, and it was a huge source of insecurity for me. Oh, no. That's not good. Yeah. Well, it's probably the reason I developed a sense of humor.

Yeah. And in my senior year of high school, freshman year of college, my dermatologist said there's something called Accutane. And I was on it for eight weeks, and I haven't had a blemish since. Changed my life. Wow. Changed my life. And I tried to find this guy named Gary Peck, and it was developed by Hoffman and LaRoche. And I just wrote one of those emails that they read. And I don't know if they read this.

For example, whoever invented Depends. Literally, the company's adult diapers basically get tens of thousands of letters saying, this has changed my life. And it's easy to laugh at it. Anyways, I wrote a similar letter in college saying, I think it was Hoffman and sophomore row, saying, this drug changed my life. Wow, interesting. You know, it was discontinued in 2009 because of side effects. Well, for pregnant women, I think, especially. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And now there's lots of generic versions of the same drug. Yeah. Changed my life.

But that's good for you. How cute. That's so cute. You tried to get the Accutane. I would like track down the, I thought I was, I was expecting stakeums, the stakeums head or something. The inventors. That's what I was expecting. I did not expect Accutane. That and the inventor of the two headed. I mean,

that was. And we're out. Okay. I knew that was coming. Okay. I'm moving on now. That's, are you done with the dirty talk?

From the Vox Media Podcast Network. Are you done with the dirty talk? Cause we're going to a young listener. Are you done? Oh God, this is so long. Why did we have to have a question from 11 when I'm especially prof? Because we're going to a young listener. Are you done? Oh, God. This is so long. Why did we have to have a question from 11 when I'm especially profane? Oh, you're going to be fine. Come on.

All right. Now listen to me. Be nice. Okay? Get it ready. Get it together. Get it together. All right.

Okay. You've got. You've got. I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. The question comes from a youngest listener ever to write into the show. We promise we'll try to keep this section PG rated. I am fine, but Scott, I want you on your best behavior.

I'll read his email. Hi, my name is Henry. I'm 10 years old. I have a question about investing. Where should I start investing the money I've saved up? I would like some money to stay invested for a while, but also like some money quickly. My dad says that you are good people to ask about this. Scott, I'm going to give this to you, and I want you to give this young man some advice because you believe in investing from an early age.

So, first off, this young man should take time to recognize that he is way ahead of where other young men are. To be thinking about your future is an investment in yourself, it's an investment in your parents. It's an investment in America. So I think it's wonderfully syncing this way. And this is how we should think about it. When you invest, you want to think, well, what is my comparative strength? Can I invest in small companies? Do I have domain expertise around something?

Most people don't. So what most people are better off doing is investing in index funds because the natural trajectory of the market is up. And what this young man has on his side is time, and that is he can survive short-term or medium-term dips. So as long as he invests in a diversified ETF or index fund, I like SPY or QQQ, he should look at every $10 that he manages to save. And that's not easy. There's a lot of fun stuff to spend $10 on, whether it's movies or gummy bears or having some fun. But if he can

take $10 right now at his age, when he is our age, if he just saves $10 a month and then $100 a month when he gets a little bit older, he will be a millionaire. So every time he takes $10 a month and then $100 a month when he gets a little bit older, he will be a millionaire. So every time he takes $10, $50, or $100, he needs to say to himself, this is the sacrifice that I am making such that I can take care of myself, live a wonderful life, and take care of my parents. And the other thing he should do, the other thing he should do, in addition to investing in low-cost funds at Vanguard, SPYQQQ, if there's a couple bucks I invest in the market, I want you to match it. This is an investment in our future. I'm going to take care of you and mom. I want you to match it. And every time he looks at that money, every time he looks at a $10 bill,

he should say, what can I do with this $10? Or do I want it to be a thousand? Because it will be a thousand if he invests it now. But that's the way to look at it. That's the way to look at it. Very nice. What about a short-term thing? He said, I want to make some money quickly. That would be stocks, picking stocks. Well, here's the thing. That just doesn't exist. And that is, if you need money in the short-term, keep it in T-bills or an interest-bearing account. You can now get about five and a quarter percent. T-bills or an interest-bearing account, you can now get about five and a quarter percent. But he should be leaning on his parents for all his expenses and saving. Here's the thing, the coolest men in the world are the ones who protect themselves and protect others.

And one of the ways you protect others is through financial strength. And one of the ways you achieve financial strength is by foregoing short-term pleasure, not buying that Slurpee, not buying that coffee, not buying that Lego, going to the movies in the afternoon when you can get discounts. Try to gamify it, but set yourself an objective. See if you can save $20 and $40 and $50 and ask dad and mom to match it. And then never touch it. Try and be really disciplined and never touch it. And then when you're my age- So not Bitcoin. Not Bitcoin, kid. Don't do cryptocurrencies. I would be comfortable saying don't do that. And then here's the thing. When he's a young man and he's thinking about forming a household or has a partner or a spouse

and wants to have kids and wants to do really wonderful things for his kids and wants to take care of his mother, he can look back and think, all of it was worth it. All of it was worth it. And he's so far ahead of where everybody is. I agree. My son, Louie, just sat me down and said, we got to talk about how to manage money and everything else. He's 21.

And he wants to think about buying a house. He's got a little bit of money he inherited. And we talked about that. And you're very 10 years old. He did not come up to me at 10 years old and ask this. He's got a little bit of money he inherited. And we talked about that. And you're very 10 years old. He did not come up to me at 10 years old and ask this. He's asking it when he's 21, which is good early too, actually. So I'm going to, of course, I'm going to turn this to me. But when I was 13, my mom's boyfriend gave me $200 and said, go buy stock of one of those

fancy brokerages. And I went into the first brokerage, Merrill Lynch. I sat there, got very insecure, walked across the street. And this guy named Cy Serra from Dean Winter Reynolds came up and said, hi, I'm Cy. And he spent an hour with me talking about the markets. And we bought 16 shares of Columbia Pictures at about 13 bucks a pop. And every day, I'm not joking, for two years, I would take 20 cents, go to the phone booth in the middle of the field at Emerson Junior High School and call Cy. And he would update me on how Columbia Pictures was doing. The stock is down because Casey's Shadow is a bomb. The stock is up because

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a hit. And it taught me so much about the markets. The reason I get to do crazy cool things with my kids and have a lot of fun is from money I've made from the markets. So developing a passion and an understanding of the markets at a young age is going to pay dividends the rest of his life. Yep, sounds right. It sounds right. Excellent question. Thank you, Henry.

And thank you for behaving, Scott. That's a very helpful thing. So you're like Cy from Dean Witter Reynolds. Anyway, if you've got a question of your own and you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVID. We get a ton of them. We're going to be doing more listener mail stuff because we get so many emails. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month.

Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, you made a prediction last week. It's getting some attention. Let's throw to the clip. I think President Trump is not gonna run for president under the auspices of a plea deal. All right, any revisions you wanna make? No, I wanna expand on it. I'm more convinced of this. Okay, I got a lot of attention.

Someone said I was stunned. I wasn't stunned. I was like, what? Where did that come from? Anyway, go ahead. Let's just do the math. It's gonna become increasingly clear. Everybody talks, it's just so ridiculous when MSNBC or CNN put these polls on the screen. It doesn't matter

what the nation thinks. It matters what five states think. It's essentially Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, I think Georgia decide the election. We already know the other 45 states, we know how they're voting. It's five states. And if you look at those five states, if you look at the issues in the map, Biden beats Trump easily, easily. Unless that changes, unless that changes, if Biden is inaugurated in January of 2025, the likelihood that Trump goes to prison goes from one in 10 to like one in three. And here's his life. All his currency is the threat of him winning right now. So he has currency right now to go strike a deal that includes no jail time. And then what is his life in January of 2025? He's a billionaire. He has sycophants that think he's amazing. He can do whatever he wants. He can just have an amazing life. He has to settle all of them. They're all different cases. I think they would be very creative about it. I think he has a lot of currency right now. But what happens to his currency? Do you think Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene stand by him when he becomes the guy

that literally took the Republican Party down, not once, not twice, but arguably three times? They seem to love it. They think winning means you aren't pure enough, just so you know. I don't know. If he loses again, I just think they all abandon him. I think they drop him like second period civics, and I use civics on purpose. I don't know. They're sticking with him through two losses, two significant losses. No way. If he continues to decimate the Republican Party and he's a loser, none of these people like him or his principles. I think even his core base begins to abandon him. And then the momentum towards putting this criminal in prison becomes a torrent, a runaway

flood. And at some point, a legal counsel is going to say to him, you realize it looks, the map just looks like you're going to lose. And the day you lose, you no longer have the currency to negotiate a deal because all the people standing in the way saying the DOJ has been weaponized, stop talking about it and let the DOJ do its work. All right. All right. So, it's out there, Scott. I like it. It's out there. We'll see. He's depraved and he's irrational. He's not stupid. Well, he might be stupid because he continues to seem to double down, but it might be all for show. You're right.

It could be. I don't know. The question is, is he a true believer in himself and his luck, or does he think his luck has run out? He does believe in his luck, and he has a lot of it. He's had a lot of it over the years. He's a slippery character, and he's slipped out of a lot of things. And so he probably is in a pattern-matching situation where he thinks he's going to slip out of these two. The world's closing in on him and he knows that he's about to have a third indictment. Yeah. I mean, all they need is one.

Georgia. All they need is one. Georgia. That'll be five. Yeah, that'll be a lot. Anyway, and who knows what else is coming. He's losing to E. Jean Carroll again. All the things went against him last week. All the legal stuff went against him. Anyway, we'll see what happens. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Enjoy yourself.

Let me know how you like all these movies you're seeing. And we'll discuss it in our next show. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Untertott engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Neil Saverio, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Who is a 10-year-old Henry? Who is an impressive 10-year-old Henry? Who's going to be an even more impressive 20, 30, 40, and 50-year-old man? Henry, why? Because he's going to be able to

take care of himself and others because he is thinking ahead. He is showing discipline. He is showing concern for his family. He is showing an understanding of the markets, and he is showing at a very young age a wonderful sense of masculinity, trying to protect himself and others. Go, Henry!