The Ben Mulroney Show - Take a walk in the forest? Not in Nova Scotia, at least not until it rains

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

 - Barry Barnet         Executive Director/ATV association of Nova Scotia - Dr. Eric Kam – Economics professor at U of T - Dr. Rolando Del Maestro  -  neurosurgeon If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I mean, I looked at a number, God, it must have been five years ago. Five years ago, there were one million active podcasts that you could choose from, and you choose to spend your time with us. And I promise you, it has not and will never be lost on me. It will also never be lost on me how significant the wildfires are in Saskatchewan. They are, so many of them are raging out of control. One of the most frustrating things about them,

is that almost half of them were started by human beings, which is dumbfounding, but it's the reality. And you will remember that a few weeks ago, some American legislators clutched their pearls and asked politely if we could do something about the smoke that was coming from the north into the United States, because it was ruining barbecue season

for those precious people in Minnesota who they don't have a long summer and they can't enjoy themselves and so it was being you do something about your wildfires yeah and so that that was ludicrous

and idiot I was like okay if you can do something about I don't know the scourge of guns that are coming across our border and killing our citizens and making life unlivable here, yeah, maybe we'll do something about these acts of God. Now, I take the point that some of them are man-made, but wildfires are wildfires. It's a, you can't, you can't light a fire if, uh, if the, um, the forest has seen rain in a few months, right? Um, anyway, it is what it is.

But it continues because Manitoba Premier Wob Canoe, keeps hitting it out of the park, accused a group of Republicans of throwing a timber tantrum and playing political games after they called Canada out over the wildfire, sending smoke billowing across the international border. Quote, these are attention seekers who can't come up with a good idea on health care or on making life more affordable. So they're playing games with something that is very serious.

And so, yes, there's a new volley here. In a Wednesday news release, Wisconsin State Rep. Callahan joined other Republican state lawmakers from Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota in filing a formal complaint against Canada to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and the International Joint Commission, a bi-national organization that resolves disputes on shared water and air quality. The Republican lawmakers called for an investigation of Canada's wildfire management practices and for potential remedies under international law. I agree with Wob Canoe. These guys are trying to.

to say, look over there because we don't want you looking over here. Pay attention to the big bad Canadians because there's potentially something over here that we're doing that we don't want you to see. And this is not just reserved to Minnesota. Wildfires are a global issue. You know, in a world of climate change, which is real, what used to be a small problem is now a regular occurrence and it is now at a point where, we have ministries devoted to wildfire management and crisis prevention.

So Nova Scotia is dealing with this as well. And Premier Tim Houston took the extraordinary step of closing access to forests. And here he is at a press conference, and you can see on his face, he is tired. He is at the end of his rope. And he knows that he's got to give people some news that, They don't want to hear, and he doesn't want to have to give. But he's not paid to be the boss to only tell people what they want to hear. Effective 4 p.m. today, we're telling Nova Scotians stay out of the woods.

We are restricting travel and activities that really aren't necessary for most of us. Hiking, camping, fishing, and the use of vehicles in the woods are not permitted. Trail systems through woods are off limits. Camping is allowed, but only in official campgrounds. The fine for violating any of these bans is the same as the fine for the ban on burning, $25,000. And if you're a smoker, for God's sakes, be mindful of where you're budding your butt out. If you don't and you cause a fire, we will hold you accountable. Yeah, it's, he's trying to get ahead of these people.

He's trying to get ahead of the idiot factor because there are a lot, in a big enough data set, you will have idiots who think the rules don't apply to them or that whatever they do in the woods will not lead to the devastation that we see. But we've seen it happen hundreds of times. I believe in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, there are hundreds of fires, or at least, no, I'm sorry, there were 200, over 200 actives and over 100 were caused by human beings. and their decisions. And so he's trying to get ahead of it.

And the fine for violating the ban, $25,000. He goes on and he says, look, if you're trying to get from point A to point B in order to do so, you have to cross a short path that goes through the forest, that's fine. But we're not going to come after you for that. But if your goal when heading into the woods, if your intention is to spend time in the woods,

that's not allowed. It's not as cut and dried as you would think. Here is a little bit of a guy named Jeff Evily or Evilly who says he's trying to figure out what means in the woods and what's not in the woods. I'm in Petersfield Provincial Park in the most tyrannical province of Canada, which is Nova Scotia, with my fuzzy friend Axel, where we walk pretty much every single morning. and here you can see that this area is taped off because that trail is the woods but this area is not taped off because that's not the woods and I'm not airing the whole thing but over the next two minutes or so he gives examples of what is the woods and is cordoned off and what is not the woods which looks exactly the same and it's quite funny and I don't know maybe he found the one place where the rule doesn't make a a lot of sense. But I suspect it's just not something that had been fully and properly tested and implemented efficiently and optimally. But look, this is the reality of life in

the world now. I mean, look, we do you remember right, right before the pandemic? Do you Remember that picture that was all over the internet of Australia on fire? Do you remember that picture? It was a shot. It was a picture from space. Yes, yes, yes. Now, I've heard that that was not, like it was, it was, um, they sweetened the picture for effect.

Yeah. That makes sense. I don't know that it was that prevalent or prominent. But that was five years ago in Australia. And it's not specific to Australia. And I, it's not specific to California. You'll remember the wildfire. in California. And this happens everywhere now. This is just our life now. This is the reality

of the world we live in. And there are things that we can do to stop that. And if scaring the bejesus out of people with a $25,000 fine will at least get us to the other side of wildfire season, it's worth being the bad guy for temporarily. And you could hear it in Tim Houston's voice. He did not, he even said it. He's like, summer is one of the best times to be in Nova Scotia. Of course I don't want to do this, but I have to do this.

He said, and go to the beach. He said, go to the beach and if you have to cross a little wooded area to get there, do so. Just don't start a fire. And it's important to say that because people will go to the beach and they will think that I'm on the beach. I can have a fire, not remembering

that a gust of wind can take an ember and have it travel. knows how far, probably farther than any of us think, and that can land in a dry patch and we can be right back to where we don't want to be. You got to lay it out for people, because like I said, with a big enough data set, you are going to collect a lot of idiots. And so in a case like this, you have to legislate to the lowest common denominator. You have to have an idiot clause in all of these plans because idiots are good at one thing, finding a way to mess things up for everybody else. And there you go. That's all I got to say about that. Hey, he lives it. He

breathes it. And right now, he says it's a Tinderbox. We'll talk to a Nova Scotian who spends most of his time in the deep woods and why he says he's never seen it this dry. That conversation is next. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Prior to the break, we were talking about the exceedingly dry summer that so many provinces are experiencing, they're in the throes of it in so many different places, and of course the responsibility for management and mitigation falls to the provincial governments. And the unprecedented move in Nova Scotia to block access by regular Nova Scotians from the woods that they so enjoy during the summer months.

Well, we were talking about it before the show, who goes into the woods a lot and probably makes their livelihood over it or some businesses, but also just enthusiasts are people in the ATV community, people who love going off-roading so they can experience the woods in a way that just walking around doesn't allow for. So we're joined now by Barry Barnett, the executive director of the ATV Association of Nova Scotia. Barry, thank you so much for being here. Oh, glad to be here. So this is not a good day for you. There's not a good day for your cohort to learn that the very place that is your playground is now off limits. Yeah, for now. You know, we continue to hope for rain, and when it comes, I'm certain we'll be loud back in.

So this is not the first time for us either. We've had this in the past. So give me a sense of how dry is it? Like, sometimes a government can err on the side of caution. I mean, we saw it, especially in Ontario, during the COVID crisis, where I think we were probably a little too heavy handed in trying to keep people safe, quote unquote. Is this a case of them getting it right or airing on the side of caution? You know, out of, what was the line in the pandemic? Out of an abundance of caution, we're closing this down.

Well, I think there is an element of an abundance of caution here, but not a drastic one. It's very dry. I mean, very dry. And our members have been telling us for several weeks that it's been this way. It isn't altogether pleasant out there on ATV, especially for traveling a group, when it's like this anyway, because it's very dusty and dry. How dusty? How dusty is it? Well, you don't want to be the second person in the line.

That's true. Yeah, because, you know, when you guys... are getting up there in speed, you probably have to keep a little bit of a buffer distance between each other, which means that that dust can billow. Yeah, and it does. And it's a side effect of summer and riding in the summer. The good thing for us is that our riding season pretty much in most of Nova Scotia is year-round. So our ATV season isn't limited to the summer. It's actually probably more relevant in the fall and spring, but we ride winter as well. We ride winter as well. A big part of Nova Scotia has open trails all year round.

But it's got to be, yeah, I'm not trying to cause division here, but, you know, it feels to me like organizations like yours would probably be, you know, you're the guys who would not be part of the problem. You know, you're responsible stewards of the environment. You know that you can't ride your ATVs if you're not treating the force with respect. and so if you're coming on this show saying no this is this move was was needed it's appropriate that means things must be pretty bad they are bad and you know this is uh eerily similar to two years ago when we had a couple major forest and uh and lots of people lost their homes in fact some of those people are still not in their homes and they're still waiting for homes to be rebuilt

not far from from where i live right now so uh so that's that's also i'm sure was heavy on the minds of the of the provincial government when they made this decision. What do you think of these American legislators, these U.S. representatives who are taking the outrageously untethered from reality position that the smoke from our forest fires and wildfires is offensive to them and they want us to, and now they're actually trying to take us in some way, shape, or form to court? Well, maybe we should blame them for the fact of using up all our rain, so. It is, I'm struggling to, so you're saying that this is, you know this is temporary,

you know eventually the snow is going to come and you'll be back in there. But this is, this, this might not be an aberration. This could be something that happens every year. Well, you know, you mentioned the snow's going to come. And for us, we don't get a lot of snow anymore. We used to. Yeah. You know, things have changed in Nova Scotia with respect to our climate.

Many of the snowmobile clubs are now ATV clubs. Really? Yeah, we still have active snowmueling in parks of Nova Scotia. But yeah, it's a change primarily driven by a change in weather and climate. And, you know, so it does enable us to advance our sport. but at the same time it comes with hazards like this and we just have to live with them and find ways to make sure people stay safe

are there any are there any particulars about this ban that people should that you think people should know like I listened to what Tim Houston said so I got the I got the flyover from 30,000 feet are there any details of this plan that people might miss if they don't read the fine print

well i mean obviously and he said this it's uh it's the risk of a 25 000 fine which is a big fine uh i'm not sure or aware of any of these being levy but i'm sure that we'll find out do you think do you think the fine is is going to is you think it's big enough that people are just this the sticker shock alone is going to keep people who would normally be defiant from playing by the rules i think some i don't think all there are people out there that quite frankly, this is their thing. They'll want government to be in their way, and they'll just continue to do whatever they want and challenge this. So that's just the nature of humans, and we saw that a lot

during COVID. And at the end of the day, there's not much we can do about those folks, but we can appeal to the people who are concerned about their neighbors and the folks that live around the edges of these forests and stuff. And you know what, that's the thing, right? Barry, it's, we can't stop the acts of God, you know, and we can do our best to mitigate them and we can plan for them, but we can do something about the acts of idiots. And so if that's what this is, I mean, as we said before, almost half of the wildfires in Manitoba were started by people. And so if this move by your premier can cut potential wildfires almost in half, then that's a net

positive. Exactly. And the other thing that I found interesting this time is that two years ago when they implemented a similar ban, one of the things they talked about was the requirement to keep people out of the woods so they're not wasting time rescuing individuals who might be trapped behind a fire line when they could be fighting the fire. That I think was a good and valid point. And, you know, when there's when there's no one to worry about in the woods, then your focus will be mainly on fighting those fires that are of control. Is the premier, is his government, are they being lauded for this? Are they being criticized for this? What's the general reaction been?

I think it's a little bit mixed. Obviously, like any of these decisions, the people who are opposed come out loud. But when I look on social media and see the things that are being said, I'd say it probably is significantly in favor. of a ban. Now that will diminish over time if the woods don't open up and people don't get an opportunity to ride. But, yeah, I think it's definitely in favor

of the premier's position. Well, that's my reading. And that's the question. What happens if this, like I said, what happens if the woods become off limits every summer? What if the risk? What if this is the beginning of the new normal?

What are people going to do? I mean, I don't know. that people's automatic reaction every summer is going to be okay summertime is here, it's wildfire season and we just, that means we're not allowed in the woods anymore. I don't know if that's going to be tenable. Well, and I

don't either, but I do know that there's only been two occasions where Nova Scotia has shut the forest down due to dry conditions in all of my time, both in government and as the executive director for the ATV association. So I don't expect that's going to be the case.

But, you know, who knows? right. Were there any lessons that were learned last time that you think are going to be valuable this time? I don't know if I could actually point to something other than, you know, there was a, you know, there is a lot of diligence right now among Nova Scotians when they see smoke and or smell smoke from forest fires fire. So a lot of that's going on right now. And I'd notice on social media probably I got to leave it

there my friend okay thanks so much in the 70s in the 70s four young women were found dead for nearly 50 years

their cases went cold I'm Nancy Hicks a senior crime reporter for global news in the season finale of crime beat I share how Investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a serial killer, and hear exclusive interviews

with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon music by asking Alexa to play the podcast, Crime Beat. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, it is official by a very real metric. Shopify is now the most valuable company in Canada. They have leapfrog the banks.

They have leapfrog the resource Titans to take the top spot. So how did they get there? And what does that say about the future of the Canadian economy? To talk about that and much more, we're joined by Dr. Eric Kim, economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Doc, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Benedict. How are you? I am well, thank you. I am very well. Okay, so this is no small feat. You know, 15 years ago, what the heck was Shopify? And now they're the most valuable company beating out, you know, the resource sector and the banks, which were, were forever. Those are the ones that everybody holds, right? And now Shopify has taken top spot.

Yeah, Harley's done a good job. You know, he created an online platform to help online platforms. And it has taken off like a house on fire. Now, when they say that it's the most viable company in Canada, though, let's keep in mind that. that is a very stratified measure that they're saying in the last few months that their stock price has gone up more than any other company in Canada because I took a quick look at both market capitalization, which is just the amount of stocks you have times what the stock is worth plus profitability. And to my ranking, the Royal Bank of Canada is still winner and champion

in this country, no matter which measure you use. That is not a slight against Shopify. it is an amazing, amazing contribution to the Canadian economy. But it really does make you almost laugh, Ben, that if you look at profitability and the top five companies in this Canada, country, they are all still banks. But again, not a slight. It's amazing. It's not a slight on Shopify,

but is it a slight on the Canadian economy? I mean, we've got the fact that we have one tech company in our top five, you know, why aren't there more Shopify's? I know that Wealth Simple is a great company too, but it's nowhere close to a Shopify. What aren't we doing to foster that startup mentality and grow those companies? A lot of them I have to assume if you have a good idea,

you move down to the states. I mean, I interviewed Harley on this show, and I'm sure he's gotten the question many times. Why did you stay in Canada? The answer was really given about, 50 years ago by the great E.P. Taylor, when Mr. Taylor pronounced, I love earning in Canada, but I don't love paying taxes in Canada. And so he moved his entire operation to the Bahamas. And that really is your problem, Ben. You're right. We don't have a problem in this country with

making money. We have a problem with saving money. And that's because our taxes are too high. Our incentives are too low. And our pension for monopoly is way too high. So you're right. The The problem is, is that not Shopify, the problem is we don't have enough Shopify's. And until we start incentivizing new companies like this, we aren't going to have any more. We just, our profitability margins are just too low. We come after small business. And so then small business can't grow into large business, Ben. All right.

Let's move on to Air Canada. They are facing some headwinds right now with a potential work stoppage with a walkout, a strike, rather, from their 10,000 flight attendants, which could happen as early as August 16th unless they figure something out between now and then. But in the meantime, they're, they've been upgrading. Aeroplane has been upgrading or changing how people accumulate points and get awards,

rewards rather. Yeah, although I don't know if I'd use the word upgrading. So what's going on? Really, it's a three-point system, right? They are going now on earning points based on spending, not distance, something called SQCs, which are status qualifying credits for elite status, and then milestone benefits, which are just linked to SQCs. So let's put this into English.

They want you to be an elite status holder. So who's going to benefit the most in this? Well, easy. High spending, low frequency flyers. So the more money you spend, they'd rather you go to the the other side of the world once, then go to Florida 25 times. Right. So it benefits the high spenders, the elite members, and credit card users, which sadly, who

does that hurt the most? The low spending long haul fires like say my mom and dad and casual travelers who rely on fixed awards. What they're doing, much like they started years ago with their, you can pay for your luggage, is they're trying to say, you're going to push as many people as we can up to the elite status and give them all the benefits, including trips to the lounge before they get on the place. Well, see, that's one of the problems. I mean, I just for the record, I am what's called, I'm a member of the Million Mile Club, not the Mile High Club, the Million Mile Club. And because I

traveled so much during my previous life. And so I'm 50K Elite for Life. I don't have to travel one more. I don't have to have status. I don't have to chase status anymore to get to that level. And I'd like to get to super elite for life, but, you know, boarding in group two is fine by me. And what I've found is over the past year or so, that walking into any of the lounges, the Air Canada lounges, is like walking into a bus depot. There are so many people in there now because everybody has that card that gives them immediate access, that there is nothing either exclusive or valuable about being in there anymore. You can't get a seat. The Wi-Fi is slow, and there's a line for all the food, which is subpart to begin with, but it's, you know, it's complimentary.

And so in an effort to bring as many people on board as possible, they have diluted any value that has been accumulated from working so hard within their system. Well, that's right. Yeah. And so this is just a continuation of when they told, you know, about a year ago, they said you're even going to start to, you know, pay for your carry-on or a personal item. I mean, they are really trying to grab, Ben, what's called the consumer surplus. They're trying to take that area between what you're willing to pay, what you actually pay, and just eat it right up.

And so, again, if you're a business or a premium flyer, an elite member, you're good. But if you're just what I call an average traveler, with all due respect, you're going to get screwed. Yeah. Lastly, let's talk about the Sydney-Sweeney, quote-unquote, controversy. and I put it into air quotes because I think it's a controversy in name only. And just because people who are professional outrage artists do what they are genetically programmed to do, which is be outraged, that doesn't mean that anything is wrong here. And with all of the attention, the winner in all of this appears to be shareholders of American Eagle.

Well, of course. I mean, do you remember when that idiot mayor of Toronto barred the bare naked ladies and all of a sudden sales of their albums went through the roof. This is the exact same thing. The ad was great, actually. I like the jeans thing to play on the word jeans. And, of course, the initial campaign, 10% rise in stock value, 18% after that. And then, of course, Trump took the stage.

And another 23% when he came out and said, well, I kind of like the ad because she's a Republican. There is no bad press. And this is just another example. Well, what I would say is that, you know, the expression, 80-20 issues is something that's popped up a lot. Bill Maher uses it a lot. He says these social justice issues are always, he calls them 80-20 because 80% of the people fall on one side and the loudest, the loudest most outraged people are on the 20 side. Typically Democrats take the 20 as opposed to the 80. In a situation like this where you make something

that wasn't political, political, you're going to find those 80%. Some of them, some of them are Republicans, but not all. Some of them are centrist and moderate and Democrats who just want to live their lives and think all this is nonsense. But you're going to mobilize them to do something. And they're going to prove their point, not by getting on social media and telling you why you're an idiot,

but by going out and buying these jeans. And I think that's what you're seeing. Oh, it's no different than when something happens in a university, say mine, and it's a 95-5 issue. And the ardent left wing woke crowd goes

crazy about it. The best thing about that is that it shows the other 95% that they're insane and that it's actually a good idea. There's nothing wrong with this ad that I can see and we have to stop, we have to stop dumping on people for really good industrious ideas, which goes back to your Shopify point. Agreed. Hey, thank you very much, Eric. I appreciate it. Stay healthy, a new Canadian study shows that pairing human instruction with AI guidance produces the best results in neurosurgical training. Could this be the future of high-stakes, learning and what does it mean for other fields beyond medicine? We're going to break that down the findings and explore where AI enhanced education might

be headed. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. We are living in an era where almost every single day it feels like there is an advance in artificial intelligence and you think you've learned something and then it advances past that base of knowledge. And so there's naturally an element of fear that is encroaching into people's lives. And they are worried, and I don't know if it's rightly so, they are worried that AI is coming for their jobs. AI is coming for their livelihood. AI is not going to allow them

to pay the bills anymore. What is it going to mean for the future of work? And there is a study out of McGill on neurosurgeons. And we're joined now by the senior author, Dr. Rolando del Mastro, neurosurgeon and current director of the Neurosurgical Simulation at Artificial Intelligence Learning Center at McGill, who did a study on this in the high-tech, very specific field of neurosurgery, and the results are quite emboldening. They should offer ambitious optimism for the future. Doctor, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Ben.

Yeah, so tell us what you studied, how you study it, and what the results were. Well, in essence, what we're doing at the present time is getting important information of exactly what happens doing an operative procedure. My particular area of expertise happens to be in neurosurgery and in brain tumor surgery, and therefore we're basically trying to figure out what actually happens during an operative procedure and what do the hands do during that opera procedure. Basically, the bottom line is, you know, we can measure 5,000 things that the hands are doing during a complex operative procedure. And humans are not able to deal with that amount of complexity. So what we basically have moved forward with is using artificial intelligence, which are, in essence, sort of equations that help us unload all that information and make it understandable to us. And one of the questions that has come up is that we've developed what is called

a intelligent, continuous expertise monitoring system. And what that basically is, is what we call an intelligent tutor. An intelligent tutor is really a computer-based system that uses artificial intelligence, and it provides personalized online feedback. In other words, it could actually talk to the student as a student is learning how to do the operation. And by using artificial intelligence, we've been able to sort out how an expert would do that operation using multiple experts as the actual training for that

particular system. And our initial experiments basically showed that this particular system was better than an expert actually being in the room and actually teaching the individual. Right. And that expert could be better suited to doing other jobs. I mean, they're an expert. They're well trained. It's not like they're going to be lacking anything to do.

So they can be repurposed into something that optimizes their skills. So, and this is a, this is a sort of an online AI tutor that is always on, always there, always guiding. That's correct. Yeah. One of the questions that we had, though, is that, okay, so this tutor is able to work and actually talks with you. It actually tells you what, in other words, if you're using too little force, it will tell you to use more force. Oh, wow. Of course, and it actually is like sort of a human, but one of the things that we were concerned about was, well, okay, we have these words that the machine actually says, and there are words that I would say in the operating room, but what would happen if you just had the humans say exactly the same words?

So, for example, let's say you have the machine is saying certain words, but then you have the human in the environment and in the sort of intelligent operating room, and the machine actually tells the human what words to say, the exact words. And what we found was that if a human is actually saying the exact words as the computer would say, humans do better. They learn quicker and faster. But then, if you actually just tell an expert what the problem is that the actual computer has found out, for example, let's say you're not using enough force or too much force.

That expert then knows that information, and they can use whatever words they want to improve the situation. And when we do that, basically what happens is you learn much, much more. Really? This is called sort of AI augmented. So what it means is that if the human gets the information from the computer system and then uses their expertise that they have in teaching and interacting with that individual, using tone and using other things to make that student understand exactly what's happening. The system works much, much better.

So it's hopeful. Yeah. Well, it is, it is hopeful because the way I'm looking at it is the neurosurgeon is the student. And the surgery is not just their final exam, but it's the whole kettle of fish, right? It's the, the fun, I mean, you got to get it right, right? You got to be as close to perfect as you can possibly be. And so you got to ace that exam. So if the human expert is the teacher, what is this AI teacher?

Would you view them as an AI companion throughout the exam? I'm just trying to figure out how we can extrapolate this to. other learning environments? Well, basically, in any learning environment, which involves sort of handmade and skills or other types of skills, what the computer can do is can provide the human with information as to what exactly is going on at any individual second during that particular procedure. For example, there are sort of equations that can predict what a human would do at that stage of an operation.

And if the learner, the student is not doing that, the actual machine can actually tell you, well, you're not doing it correctly. So the biggest thing that we're trying to do is to develop an intelligent operating room where the AI systems in the background are helping this surgeon be as good as the surgeon can possibly be. First, to do the operation correctly, to do it in a reasonable amount of time. But most importantly, to prevent error. That's the major concern that you have the procedure is preventing error.

Well, let me just play devil's advocate for one moment. Because I guess one could argue that what you have studied and the results are incredible and it's emboldening for the future. But the future will also include an AI that is better than it is today. You studied this with the current limitations on AI. And what we're learning is the current limitations on AI They won't exist We're going to blow past them tomorrow And then the next day and the day after that

And somebody somewhere is going to create Some sort of surgical robot That when coupled with the AI That is being trained every day on these surgeries You could argue that what you've discovered What you've uncovered here Is a snapshot of a time and place That will not exist tomorrow

Yeah, I think if you look at any of the sort of future sort of areas that you think about and the movies that you've seen about the futures, almost all, let's say medical individuals are either asteroids or our computers or our robots. And the reason for that is the idea basically is that these robots will be able to completely replace humans. I have a good antidote for you. Just one minute. Yes.

So William Oster was known because he was one of the first individuals who taught at the bedside. And what he would have would he have all these students around the bedside. And we'd talk to the patient and interacting with the patient, examining the patient, etc. And he was examining an individual who was clearly dying. And he was talking to the person, interacting with him and fully knowing that that individual was going to die. He walked out of the room and he started to whistle. And his students run up to him and said, well, sir, sir, why are you whistling? He said, so I will not weep.

Yeah. I can tell you right now that no computer system is going to weep for any of him. We're going to leave it there, Doc, but I want to congratulate you on giving us some data to support any optimism that we might have on a world with AI. Thank you very much. Stack TV is now 50% off. We've got to work to do. That's literally the entire streaming service. Hurry, hurry, come with me.

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