The David Pakman Show - 12/6/22: The Hunter Biden Obsession and Anti-Intellectualism
Episode Date: December 6, 2022-- On the Show: -- Doctor Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, joins David to discuss artificial intelligence, machine learning, super-intelligence, the risks of AI, and much more... -- How Republicans use anti-intellectualism to divide America and to try to win elections -- The American right wing's sick and bizarre obsession with Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son -- A new report reveals that failed former President Donald Trump hid a $19.8 million loan from Daewoo, a North Korea-linked company in South Korea -- Failed former President Donald Trump has a mental breakdown on Truth Social over being called out accurately for his demand to be reinstated to the Oval Office -- Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson says there is no "more brazen attack on democracy" than the flopped bombshell Twitter Files story -- Failed Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake now has "a lawsuit" in Arizona -- Voicemail caller asks about the possibility of human hibernation during winter flu season -- On the Bonus Show: South Carolina Democrats stunned by Biden's 2024 primary plan, disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti sentenced to 14 years in prison, 9 million Americans wrongly told they were approved for student loan debt forgiveness, much more... 🛌 Get up to $350 OFF a Helix Sleep mattress + 2 free pillows at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 🧪 MEL Science: Use code PAKMAN for 50% OFF at https://melscience.com/sBLN/ ⚠️ Use code PAKMAN for a free supply of BlueChew at https://go.bluechew.com/david-pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 82% OFF + 3 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🧻 Reel Paper: Use code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/lemur -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Well, I want to start today with how Republicans are continuing to use anti-intellectualism
and pseudo-intellectualism to divide America,
and very specifically and overtly, to try to win elections, not in a vague sense.
They're trying to win today in Georgia by using anti-intellectualism to divide America and to
create this narrative of good and evil, right and wrong, elite and working man or whatever sort of black, white
framing you want to use. I was doing research for a story that I was going to bring to you today,
and it's a clip of Republican Senator John Kennedy, where he talks about, oh, don't let
these high IQ people, this, that and the other thing, all in a defense of why we should or Georgians should vote tonight
in the December runoff, December 6 runoff, which is which is today in Georgia for Herschel Walker
rather than Raphael Warnock. The framing being, OK, Herschel Walker might be kind of dumb,
but don't let these high IQ people tell you that they're the ones you should be voting for or
whatever the case may be. And in doing my research for this, I came across a really great article that says just about everything that needs to be said,
as well as it can be said by Jason Easley and Sarah Jones.
And so we're going to link to the article. But but it gives us a great jumping off point for this discussion.
And in the article, Jason and Sarah write how Republicans are using anti-intellectualism to divide America.
Senator John Kennedy's comments on high IQ stupid people show that Republicans have weaponized anti-intellectualism to divide America.
Anti-intellectualism is nothing new in the Republican Party, they write.
But Senator John Kennedy used Herschel Walker's lack of intellect as a selling point while urging Republicans to despise anyone with a high IQ.
Now we're going to look at a clip.
And of course, the irony of this is, well, you might figure out the irony, but let's
play the clip first.
And these high IQ stupid people have an answer for everything.
You know why? Because they think they're smarter and more virtuous than the American people.
These woke, high IQ, stupid people, they're easy to recognize.
Easy to recognize. This is, there are so many subtexts here, but let's keep playing it. They hate George Washington.
Ah.
They hate Thomas Jefferson.
They hate Dr. Seuss and they hate Mr. Potato Head.
Dr. Seuss, by the way.
Okay.
These woke, high IQ, stupid people. They walk around. They walk around with Ziploc bags of kale that they can eat to give them energy.
Now, if you want food does provide energy to the body.
That's true.
Eat kale.
That's up to you.
I don't eat kale.
You know why?
Because kale tastes to me like I'd rather be fat.
OK, there is so there's a lot there to comment on, and I'm not going to comment on a lot of it.
Notice how John Kennedy talks about how you can tell who the high IQ stupid people are. One of the tells to some degree is the way people
speak, of course. And maybe in hearing John Kennedy speak because of his accent, maybe he's
not supposed to read like one of those high IQ stupid people. But we know that John Kennedy is
playing a character. And part of the character is a character developed to appeal to
exactly the types of people that vote for Republicans, because when you actually try
to figure out, well, who is this John Kennedy guy? John Kennedy has a degree from Vanderbilt
University, and then he has a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
And then he went to Magdalene College after that. I'm trying to see what exactly degree he has.
He has from their Magdalene College. He got a an additional degree there. OK, I'm not sure
exactly what he does. He has a jurist doctor that that is. I know that we don't in the US,
we don't refer to lawyers as doctors in some other countries like in Argentina.
Lawyers are generally called doctors, just sort of like like Dr. Jill Biden is a doctor of education. Doesn't matter. He has a doctorate,
a jurist doctor. He is one of those very people. But at the same time, he has developed a character
wherein he is not one of those people. And it's because anti-intellectualism is a product. It's a package
that is being sold to divide America, regardless of who actually are the so-called high IQ or low
IQ people. Now, you could argue John Kennedy doesn't have a lot of street smarts, maybe not
a lot of common sense. But to argue that he is dramatically different than these high IQ people that he is criticizing is really just
not the case. And this is exactly how they frame these arguments when it's convenient.
When it's convenient to them, they say, listen, we've got brilliant people in our party. Ron
DeSantis, who went to Harvard, I think, if I recall correctly, Ted Cruz, who went to Harvard,
when it's not convenient going to Harvard and even getting a law degree from Harvard. I mean,
you've got it's sometimes it's great to have a law degree from Harvard. Sometimes it's a signal of
epic, never ending wokeness and progressivism and Harvard is racist and going to Harvard is bad.
It's just whatever is convenient. And when you go to them and you actually say, I haven't heard it
done, but if you go to them and you say, hey, is having a law degree from Harvard a good thing or
a bad thing when it comes to who should be leading the country? Well, you know, that depends, David.
That really depends. It's much more complicated than that. Oh,
so then it's not really about having a law degree from Harvard, is it? Right now, they're using all
of this simply to try to justify voting for Herschel Walker because they don't want a Republican
Raphael Warnock to continue being a senator representing the state of Georgia. That's as
simple as it is. The topic more generally, if it's interesting to you, we've done so much content on
it. A few things you can check out on the YouTube channel include the video, why are people falling
for fake intellectualism? You can also find the video on my YouTube channel. Why is pseudo
intellectualism so appealing? And then lastly, and there's many more, but of the three that I'll highlight,
if you want to see this ideology applied specifically to something more recent,
like the pandemic, the video, the disgusting anti-intellectualism in the COVID-19 pandemic,
you can also just search my YouTube channel for words like intellectual or intellectualism, and you will find a treasure trove of content.
Let's talk about the rights, sick, depraved obsession with a guy named Hunter Biden. Now,
I know many of you are evaluating and thinking about how has the presidency of Joe Biden gone?
Has he done good things? Has he done bad things? Has he
not done enough things or is he doing too much? Is his perspective on gun safety the right
perspective? We're talking about the president. There is a large swath of people and many of them
are in positions of power. Many of them are people who have large microphones, some literally large and some
proverbial, metaphorically large microphones who are obsessed not with Joe Biden or not alone with
Joe Biden, but with a guy named Hunter Biden. Now, Hunter Biden has no role whatsoever in his
father's administration, simply none. It's not like Jared Kushner or Ivanka, who were
involved in their father's and father-in-law's administration. Hunter is not trying, nor does
he have any role in Joe Biden's administration. And yet there are many on the right who are
obsessed with him. There is a really good article, which we will link to in the description to the
YouTube video called by Michael Tomaski for New Republic.
It was published yesterday called There's Nothing Stranger Than the Rights Fixation with Hunter Biden.
Now, the article is excellent. It depends how you want to interpret this.
But on the one hand, it is a bizarre hyper fixation on Hunter Biden from the right.
On the other hand, it's
also kind of not. And we're going to talk about that. The sort of catalyst for this article,
which I encourage you to read, was the Twitter files bombshell that flopped over the weekend,
a Twitter thread published by journalist Matt Taibbi. And a couple important things to highlight here.
The article reads, what exactly is at the root of the right's Hunter Biden obsession?
At its simplest level, the Hunter saga is just a potential Achilles heel for a president they want to defeat in 2024, assuming Joe Biden runs. I think that that's right. I think that
they don't really care about Hunter Biden.
In and of itself, but they care about Hunter Biden as a possible way to hurt Joe Biden in 2024.
But that has never quite explained, the article goes on, the manic quality of the drive to turn Hunter into the symbol and standard bearer of the Democratic Party and of liberalism. Generally,
it had to have something to do. I always thought, with the notion that Hunter represents the licentiousness with which
conservatives associate liberals, his drug use, his sketchy affair with his dead brother's wife,
and now his entry into the effete and vaguely un-American Manhattan art world.
But this weekend, things got even weirder. And ways that were so sorted, it took me a while to
even understand what was going on. If you had the good fortune or sense not to crawl down this
particular rabbit hole over the weekend, fear not, I won't drag you into the depths that I descended.
The briefest recap is this. On Friday, Elon Musk tweeted he would reveal how Twitter supposedly
covered up the Hunter Biden scandal in October 2020. Matt Taibbi posted some of the emails found
on Hunter's hard drive. Some showed the Biden campaign asking Twitter to refrain from posting
certain material. That's basically it. In some quarters of the right, this is the biggest scandal
in the history of the republic because it allegedly proves that Biden used his governmental power.
He, by the way, didn't control any of the government at the time to set fire to the Constitution. Musk tweeted, if this isn't a violation of the
Constitution's First Amendment, what is? There are a couple different things that I believe are
important to mention here. First of all, if we want to go back to the source of all of this, the Hunter Biden laptop itself. What's in a sense
ironic is that everything there that definitively touches Joe Biden makes Joe Biden look really
good. What I mean by that is that there are lots of allegations the right makes about
the Joe Biden connection. They say, well, when the messages refer to the big guy getting a cut,
it's about Joe Biden. There is no evidence of that at this point in time. Could it be true?
Sure. There is no evidence of that at this point in time. The things we know relate to Joe Biden
that we have uncovered based on these emails are that Joe Biden really loves
Hunter. The Joe Biden really expressed empathy for Hunter's drug use and and drug problems,
et cetera. The voice message where he says, it's dad, I called to tell you I love you. The right tried to make this frame Biden as being weak. The truth is Don Jr. probably
wishes his dad talked to him that way and told him he loved him. That relationship doesn't really
seem quite so good. But the truth is that everything we definitively have linked to Joe
Biden from the laptop makes him look pretty good. And the reality is that
conservatives don't really have the indictment of Joe Biden anywhere that exists of Trump.
And that's why they are making it all about Hunter Biden. And in his article, Michael Tomasky
eventually gets to this exact conclusion.
The Hunter crusade, he writes, is thus driven not only by pursuit of scandal to hang around
his father's neck. It is rooted in the rights, antique and cruel value system, which most
Americans no longer share. Should Republicans catch Hunter in some genuinely corrupt or illegal arrangement? So be
it. Let him pay his debt to society. If they don't, they will be left wondering why America
doesn't share their seething hatred of a man whom the Jesus they claim to worship would have
counseled us to regard with compassion. This is fundamentally what this is all about. And there's two sides to this now
to get back to the bizarre nature of the obsession. On the one hand, it is bizarre.
They're obsessed with someone so meaningless, not as a person. Every person has value.
Meaningless in the context of figuring out is the country going in the right or wrong direction?
What policies of Joe Biden's have been helpful versus damaging to the economy or to foreign policy or whatever? It's meaningless in that sense. And that is bizarre. But at the same time,
hyper focus on irrelevant issues has been the name of the game for this Republican Party for four, six, probably more
like eight or even closer to 10 years at this point in time. And that really shouldn't surprise
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A number of important and detailed articles to look at, including a Forbes article called
Trump owed hidden debt while in office.
This is clearly only the very beginning.
And remember, his tax returns haven't even leaked yet.
The House Ways and Means Committee has them, but they have not yet even leaked.
Let's dig into this first story.
Donald Trump's business attracted so much scrutiny during his time in office that it
would be easy to conclude that all the information about its foreign entanglements would be out
by now.
But it's not buried in a heap of recently released financial paperwork sits a surprising
revelation.
Donald Trump had
a foreign creditor he failed to disclose while running for president in 2016 and after assuming
office in 2017. The documents compiled by the Trump organization and obtained by the New York
attorney general show a previously unreported liability of $19.8 million listed as LP Daewoo. The debt stems from an agreement Trump
struck to share some of his licensing fees with Daewoo, which is a South Korean conglomerate
that partnered with Trump on a project near the UN headquarters in New York City.
Trump eliminated the debt five and a half months into his tenure as president,
according to the documents. He seems
to have acted with urgency to wipe the liability off his balance sheet from 2011 to 2016. The
balance stayed static at 19.8 million paperwork capturing Trump's financial picture as of June 30,
2017, five months into his presidency appear to show the balance dropped to 4.3 million.
Trump got rid of the
debt altogether shortly after that. Daewoo was bought out of its position on July 5, 2017.
Doesn't say who paid off the loan. Although the debt appeared on the Trump organization's
internal paperwork, it did not show up on Trump's public financial disclosure report.
Documents he was required to submit
to federal officials while running for president and after taking office.
Trump's former CFO, Alan Weisselberg, told The New York Times in 2016, his boss disclosed all
debt connected to companies in which Trump held a 100 percent stake on the documents.
That was not true. It's also important to understand that there is a
North Korean connection here, although it is not necessarily the most important or titillating
aspect of this. The very same Forbes article reads, there's little doubt that if the world
had known about the debt while Trump was president, it would have sparked conflict of interest concerns, perhaps heightened by Daewoo's historical ties to North Korea.
In the mid 1990s, the firm was the only South Korean company permitted to operate a business
inside North Korea.
Most people as rich as Trump would not be heavily influenced by a 20 million dollar
loan.
Regardless, the fact that
Trump managed to keep the debt secret for so long underscores how weak the government's ethics
safeguards are, how difficult they are to strengthen and how easily Trump could barrel
right through them as he runs for president again in 2024. So there are a few issues here. I would say that there are four issues here.
Number one, is this also still just the tip of the iceberg? This has been a question as far as
Trump's taxes go now for more than five years. What we what we know is already really bad.
And every time we learn a little bit more, we are brought inevitably to the question of how
much more is there that we don't even know about? Is this that's issue number one. Issue number two,
this was hidden, that this was deliberately hidden. And that is a problem. Number three,
the sudden rapid payoff of the debt while having made no progress on the debt for a very long
period of time. What was the reason for a very long period of time?
What was the reason for the apparent sense of urgency? It would be important to learn about
that. And then number four, maybe I skipped. I don't know. Number four, the North Korea connection.
And is it possible that this might have influenced in some way Donald Trump's obsession, quite
frankly, with Kim Jong-un and North Korea
and the meetings and the handshakes and all of that stuff. Again, as the article says,
normally someone this rich isn't going to alter their behavior dramatically over 20 million.
But we have good reason to suspect Trump's not actually as rich as he claims to be.
And also because it was hidden, it only raises the alarm around that as well. The by the way, it is continuing to to stun and shock that the obsession from the right
is with Hunter Biden's laptop and references they claim are to Joe Biden, for which there
is no proof. And meanwhile, we have all of
this actual proof and financial records where there is not even a doubt that it's all about
Trump. Trump's name is on all of it, refuses to release his tax returns. We figure out he owes
money to South Korea. It's a North Korean linked company. He hit it. And then you've got examples,
Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, all these different things. We have to look at what might be, but there is no evidence has anything to do with
Joe Biden in documents. It is continued hypocrisy. This is almost certainly only the tip of the
iceberg. And indeed, if those tax returns ever leak, I'm not saying leak them to anyone. I'm just saying if they leak,
I would expect way more of exactly this type of stuff. Donald Trump has had a mental breakdown
over being called out accurately for the things he said about the Constitution. Now, let's back
up just a moment to make sure we're all on the same page.
Reporting accurately described Donald Trump's demands for a newer new election or to be reinstated as president of the United States based on the Hunter Biden Twitter files, which
were a complete and total flop in a post on Truth Social, which we looked at yesterday and I will show you again,
Donald Trump actually says, quote, a massive fraud, a massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found
in the Constitution. He said it. He clearly said it. Trump was criticized for saying it
because it's dangerous and it's outrageous.
And it's the metaphorical defecation on the Constitution that he was accurately described
as partaking in. And Trump flipped out yesterday on truth, social truth, central lying, trying to
deny. And of course, typing in all capital letters. This is starting to be Kanye West level
stuff, or maybe the Kanye West stuff is actually Donald Trump level stuff. I don't know. Take a
look at this insane rant. Trump says, quote, The fake news is actually trying to convince the
American people that I said I wanted to terminate the Constitution. This is simply more disinformation and lies, just like Russia, Russia, Russia and all of
their other hoaxes and scams.
What I said was that when there is massive and widespread fraud and deception, as has
been irrefutably proven in the 2020 presidential election, by the way, it hasn't steps must
be immediately taken to right the wrong.
Only fools would disagree with that and accept stolen elections, MAGA, and then we enter all
caps insanity. Quote, simply put, if an election is irrefutably fraudulent, it should go to the
rightful winner or at a minimum be redone. Where open and blatant
fraud is involved, there should be no time limit for change. Trump continuing in all caps. We want
people who quote legitimately won the election. I don't know why he puts legitimately in quotes.
I don't know that the quotes mean what he thinks they mean. We want people who legitimately won
the election to lead our country, not people who had to cheat in order to win that. I agree with. And we got that person.
Trump is like your conspiracy theorist uncle, except instead of being some random guy that
you see twice a year, it's the former president of the United States who's putting this stuff out.
And of course, Trump did say the thing that now
he says he didn't say. He may not have said terminate the Constitution, but he said terminate
parts of it when you want. The original post was, quote, So with the big with the revelation of
massive and widespread fraud and deception in working closely with big tech companies,
the DNC and the Democrat Party, do you throw
the presidential election results of 2020 out and declare the rightful winner?
Or do you have a new election?
A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules,
regulations and articles, even those found in the constitution. Our great quote founders
did not want and would not condone false and fraudulent elections. He said it.
It was dangerous. It horrified the world and even some Republicans. he was called out. Now he's denying it because he's furious.
This is getting worse and worse and worse. And many Republicans don't even believe that this
is disqualifying in terms of his chance or possibility at once again being president of
the United States. We'll have the posts, the clips and all of it on our Instagram,
which you can find at David Pakman show. Also, make sure you're subscribed on our YouTube
channel. We are heading towards two million subscribers on YouTube. That's YouTube dot com
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month's supply for free when you use promo code Pacman. That's P.A.K-M-A-N. All you do is pay $5 for shipping. always good to talk to humans. Right. So, I mean, OK, let's for some in our audience
who maybe have a general sense of the idea of artificial intelligence, the term machine
learning, which I know you have a you have a particular opinion about and these sorts of
issues. I think they may have a general awareness that there are people who are very scared about the potential of an artificial general intelligence,
and there are others who have a very optimistic view of those same possibilities as maybe
bringing homo sapiens to a new level of learning and capabilities and medical advancements, etc.
Can you kind of lay out the goal posts
or the guideposts, as the term may be, of the perspectives on this issue, those who are
pessimistic versus optimistic? What is the crux of this disagreement?
Well, the way I think about it is that the computer is a pencil, okay? It's a very big pencil.
It's a very sophisticated tool, is what I'm trying to say.
And as with any powerful tool,
it can be used for good or for bad.
So there are people who worry about its impact on jobs,
losing jobs, on privacy, losing privacy,
the bias that it potentially can exhibit in its algorithms.
So that's on the one side. And then there are people who can see its potential for discovering vaccines like the COVID vaccine. I helped there and see that benefit. There's also
a group of people who really don't think of it as a tool. They think that somehow this pencil is going to escape and become a death star.
And I a little bit mocking of that point of view, because I think that it really is just a tool.
That's super interesting because it's we'll get to the why AI might be an exception, but in Neil Postman's book, Technopoly, which I think is from
the early nineties, he has a very similar perspective in general about new technologies,
which is there's sometimes this idea of new technology comes forward. Some people theorize
or speculate about possible negative consequences. The next step is, well, let's figure out a way to
get the positive, but not the negative. And his view is that all the
positive and negative will all exist. It's a question of implementation, regulation, planning,
and management, essentially, that you can't only have the good without the bad.
Where some say AI is different is at least the theoretical ability of an artificial general
intelligence to learn more quickly, more rapidly in a way that gets
it beyond whatever it's sort of initial. I don't even know if programming is the right term. You'll
tell me if that's even the right word to use. And so it's sort of outside of, you know, social media,
social media is created. It exists within certain bounds. It will have good and bad and we can regulate and
manage the difference, at least in theory with artificial intelligence would be that it can
itself go beyond the guidelines and the borders that humans set for it. Does that make it different?
Well, let's first of all, start with the fact that there is a universal and understandable fear about our role as humans and technology.
And this goes all the way back to the Jewish legend of the golem, who was this robot, and to Frankenstein and so on.
So for centuries, we've been worried in various ways that technology is going to have this
outsized role. Now, it is possible, it is conceivable that one day that'll happen.
So now the question is, how close or far are we from that apocalyptic vision? And my assessment
as somebody who's been working on this for 30 years and who's
very steeped in this technology, seeing the latest thing as of just a few days ago is
ChatGPT, which is this program you can have these amazing exchanges with. Maybe we'll talk about
that. But my assessment is that we are still decades, if not centuries away from that vision. So really what AI is today
is a lot more like the next generation of software. So again, super powerful, changing the world,
your iPhone and so on, but still very much a tool that we can use. And the notion that it'll somehow escape and become a lot more than we expect
is not really based on data. It's based on anxiety. When you look at the data, when you look
at what these computers can do, they're amazing, but they're not autonomous, right? Even take the
notion of self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles, other than the fact that they're not yet
ready for primetime and effective, you still tell the car where to go, right? It'll keep you safer
than ever eventually, but it doesn't suddenly decide, okay, you know, I want to go to Cleveland.
Yeah. And I can tell you as a Tesla driver, it's not exactly something to write home about right now that the technology, which I which I know you're aware of. There are some who I don't know if are actually
taken seriously by folks like you, like Ray Kurzweil, who for more than a decade has been
saying we're actually now in that phase that you say is decades or even maybe hundreds of years away. We just can't tell
because when you're in the middle of rapid change, it just seems slower. And in retrospect,
we will realize it. You don't agree with that. You don't believe that that time you're describing
is taking place right now. I not only not agree with that, but again, I caution to look at the data, right? So what is Kurzweil,
who again has an impressive history in technology, what's his basis for saying that?
And you can also look at him saying a number of other amazing things, like we've reached the point
where we're going to live forever and so on. I would say that he's a very optimistic individual. Fair. Okay. That's, that's fair to say.
Let's talk a little bit about, you mentioned the chat technology. The Turing test is for those who
are not familiar, sort of an idea of when does an artificial when does an AI type technology get good enough at mimicking
human conversation such that an actual human like you or I wouldn't be able to tell that we are not
speaking to another human? And folks wrote in and they said, well, you know, you should ask about our Siri and Alexa like that. I think the
answer is certainly not right. Would you agree that they are not at that level?
Siri and Alexa are very simple, but this is something that's rapidly changing. So
ChatGPT, which is this new chatbot considered the best chatbot ever. It's reached more than
a million users in five days. It's freely available on the internet. That one is getting
close to passing the fable Turing test. Is that as big a milestone as decades of literature make it out to be? Or is it a curiosity that is
self-contained enough that it does not necessarily mean, okay, now that gets us to some particular
next level? That is a great, great question. And I think the answer is that we've learned that various limits that we've set where
we believe, gosh, a computer will never do that, get crossed. And that's in 1997, a computer beating
Garry Kasparov, the world champion in chess. More recently, a few years back, beating the world
champion in Go. There was a recent computer program that plays
the strategy game of diplomacy. And now we have the Turing test. But each time we realize that
the computer is picking up an aspect of intelligence, but not the whole human level
thing. And so particularly about the Turing test, New York Times reporter John Markov said that the Turing test is a test of human
gullibility, right? So it is interacting in a way that seems human, but these programs don't
really understand what's going on. When we think about the different ways that artificial
intelligence at a level that's slightly ahead of where it is now, but not yet
at what you're describing to be decades or hundreds of years away. When we think about
some of those possibilities, there's all sorts of different fields that we could talk about.
If we talk about the medical field and the idea of using machine learning or whatever better term we may have for it, as well as big data when it comes
to patient data and learning an algorithm of questions that could be answered by a potential
patient. The idea of incredibly accurate diagnosis often comes up in lots of literature as a use for
this type of technology and that it would take out the emotion that that is there to some degree in a
so-called real doctor and that there's other benefits in the field of medicine specifically.
Is that interesting to you? Is it likely or is there something big that's missing from those
hypotheses that actually makes that not a very likely outcome in the next five to 10 years with such technology?
I think this is a great example of how powerful and beneficial computers can be
along two dimensions. First of all, we can get much better diagnoses, as you suggested,
based on more data and more analyses. And secondly, we can also make it much more widely
available. There's so many rural areas, remote countries and regions where the kind of medicine
that we're used to is just not available. And it's expensive to do it with humans. So if we
can build programs accessible over the internet that can help, that's fantastic.
Now, I think that the best use of this, certainly in the foreseeable future, isn't just the computer taking over completely,
but my favorite definition of AI is not artificial intelligence,
it's augmented intelligence.
So imagine that you have a doctor with their experience, with their empathy, being aided with this indefatigable assistant that reads all the millions, literally millions of papers coming out, that's gathering all these statistics, and that's making recommendations to the doctor.
Would you rather have your human doctor or your human doctor with this incredible tool
at their disposal?
It's a no brainer.
It is, I guess, to play devil's advocate.
The trend of doctors sitting there looking at a screen rather than the patient is already
pretty bad.
And if the logistics of having the AI help have the more sucked into the computer screen,
maybe the experience won't be better,
but maybe the outcome would. I don't know. Well, again, wonderful point. But I would say this,
A, ultimately, we do care more about the outcome, particularly when it comes to critical things.
But two, the reason that they're on the computer so much is because they have all this paperwork
to fill out. This is not a product
of AI. Now, AI systems are coming out right now that actually help to automatically fill out the
paperwork. So I think in the very near future, we'll have the computer less, sorry, we'll have
the doctor, interesting slip there, we'll have the doctor less on their computer doing that and more able to
engage with with the patient. I think I think that would be that would be a good thing.
Last thing I want to ask you about there. All of these issues ultimately end up being political,
right? Stem cell research becomes political and so does vaccines and everything becomes political.
Is it safe to assume and or is it already happening
that the political lines around AI are that those who are more conservative in their worldview
are against this type of technology? They want to try to ban it in advance or prevent its
development and that those who are more socially liberal or progressive are more open to it? Or is it
falling along different political lines? Wow. I've never been asked that question. So, David,
a wonderful question. And it is actually scrambling the political spectrum. And let me
quickly illustrate why. Yeah. On the liberal side, there's a lot of concern about bias,
racism, sexism, and these computer
programs, these AI programs are data-based, and so they sometimes absorb bias from their data.
So there's a lot of concern there. And on the conservative side, there's a lot of concern about
geopolitical tension and the fact that China and others are attempting to become superpowers, if not dominant in AI. And so
there's a very strong sense that we need to invest heavily in it, both for economic reasons and for
national security. So there are people all over the spectrum and it doesn't break out neatly.
We have been speaking with Dr. Oren Etzioni, who's the founding CEO of the Allen Institute
for Artificial Intelligence.
Super interesting.
And I really appreciate your time today and joining me.
Thank you so much.
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gift for a little one on your list. Real Papers, Little Lemurs Box and all of the other products The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. So Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson,
who has spent over a year minimizing the January 6th Trump riots, said yesterday on his program
that he can think of no no more brazen attack on our democracy than when the Biden campaign asked Twitter to take down nude pictures of Hunter Biden,
which are against the law in most states and violated Twitter's own policies on revenge porn.
That's what Tucker Carlson is pointing to as the most brazen attack on our democracy.
You have to see this and then we'll discuss it.
In the 2020 election, Twitter did this with the help of the FBI committing censorship on behalf
of one candidate while working to hurt the other candidate.
Now what I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt already.
Pay very close attention to the language he uses.
And I'm going to back it up just a few seconds because this is critical to understanding
the propagandistic value of this. Yeah, committing censorship on behalf of one candidate while working to hurt the other
candidate. It is hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy than this. This is not
how our system is supposed to work. In fact, it's illegal. What Twitter did is a violation of the
First Amendment as well as of established campaign finance law that ever declared those contributions to the Biden campaign.
That's a crime.
OK, I think there are five lies in there.
It's only a 28 second clip of which we listen to 26 seconds.
And I think there are five lies in there.
Think about the number of things that he gets wrong.
And then we'll talk about the absurdity, bigger picture of this.
There's I can think of no more brazen attack on our democracy.
Well, I can think of one.
It's January 6th, which he minimized.
And of course, many other attempts by the Trump administration over the four years he
was president to suppress speech, to control the media, kick out Jim Acosta, all these
different things.
I can think of many greater attacks on our democracy than when the Biden campaign said
to Twitter, hey, this is revenge porn.
These are nude pictures of an individual who did not release them. Please remove them. That's not
really an attack on our democracy. Number two, he says it's illegal. It's not illegal there.
I mean, at this point, it's been, what, 72, 96 hours since the Twitter files was released. And look at look at serious legal
commentaries. I don't see anyone even arguing that there was a crime here. Number three,
this was a violation of the First Amendment. No, we're talking about a private company, Twitter.
It's not about the First Amendment. The argument I think Tucker and others are making is that indirectly, because the government
told Twitter to remove the posts, it is a violation of the First Amendment.
Of course, it was the Biden campaign, not the government at the time.
So for about two or even three different reasons and layers, it is not a violation of the First
Amendment.
Then he says it
violates campaign finance laws. Now, this one has to be explained to be understood. His argument.
I'm being as charitable as possible. This is the best possible argument that you could make.
His argument is removing the posts of Hunter Biden naked was financially valuable to the Biden campaign,
like a campaign contribution. It would be called an in-kind contribution.
And so it was supposed to have been reported, but it wasn't. Now, you have to prove that in court.
It's very shaky. And I can't imagine you could prove in court that
arguing for the removal of revenge porn by Twitter is a contribution of value to a particular
campaign. Hunter wasn't running for anything, and it was against Twitter's own policies and
a crime in just about every state. Now, let's take a zoom out a little bit.
The problem isn't really Tucker Carlson specifically, is it? And what I mean by that
is we have a system that allows, on the one hand, Tucker Carlson to speak to a large audience
on a set that, you know, it looks like this is news. When you look at this, it looks like a news
show. Say things that are completely baseless and meritless and without evidence in many cases.
And then if it ever leads to a lawsuit and it goes to court, Fox News lawyers show up and they say, this is entertainment. This is not news. And what he uses hyperbole and
exaggeration as a tool to do an entertaining show. And it should not be taken literally as though he
is reporting facts. Oh, OK. Because Fox News is really going very much out of their way to frame all of this as being actual news,
as the word suggests. That's really the bigger problem here. And this is not me calling for
censorship. I'm not saying Tucker should be off the air. But the problem is the having it both
ways all the time, presenting as news. And listen, I'll be honest, much of the problem is media literacy.
The people who watch Fox, not from a media criticism standpoint, the way we do, but the
people who watch Fox to learn things and to get news, they don't realize that it's not news.
They are the perfect marks for such a deception. And it's an endless circle. I mean, at this point,
how many times have we talked about it? The circle simply continues. And the latest now is this is the greatest assault
on our democracy. What about January 6th? Never mind dozens of other things that happened under
the Trump administration. Nope. It's when the Biden campaign said, hey, this is illegal revenge
porn and it violates your own policies. Please remove it.
Whoa. The biggest scan I'm trying to is could this be potentially bigger than Obamagate?
Which, by the way, I still don't know what that is. It seems those are really the big scandals
and Hillary's emails. This is the alternative world. Alternative universe, better said,
in which the modern right wing currently lives.
Hey, you might be excited to learn Carrie Lake, who lost her race to be the Arizona governor.
She now has a lawsuit. She has a lawsuit, ladies and gentlemen. She appeared on the Steve Bannon
Real America's Voice War Room program. I still don't even know what that is, but listen
to this insanity. A friend of mine texted me two days ago. He said he lives in Arizona, said I was
in Arizona at my local car mechanic place, getting my car tuned up. And in the waiting room, they had
Steve Bannon's show on mind blown. I have never heard of such a thing. OK had Steve Bannon's show on. Mind blown. I have never heard of such a thing.
OK, Steve Bannon's show. Trump attorney Christina Bob is there. And Carrie Lake is there.
And Carrie Lake declares they are ready to go with a lawsuit. Now, what is the lawsuit going to do?
I have no idea. The election in Arizona was certified
yesterday. Kerry Lake lost. Katie Hobbs will be the governor. But folks, they have a lawsuit.
Is this a grift? Let's see if we can figure it out. How possibly can a Republican attorney general
sit there and a governor sit there and allow this fiasco? People in Arizona have to understand
some independents and Democrats. You look like
idiots on the world stage. This looks like something that would happen in the worst
of banana republics. Carrie Lake. Yeah. Before she answers, one of the worst things that could
happen is a candidate who didn't win ending up in office. Unfortunately, that's not going to
happen because this lawsuit is not going to go anywhere. But let's listen to it. Yeah, I mean, the optics in just a little over an hour, the
optics of them sitting there and signing their signature. Can you imagine to the sham election?
They did it back in 2020, two years ago, and many of us gasped and said, how could they do this?
Why couldn't they give more time to look into all of the issues now? Fast forward 2020. And remember, there's never been enough time.
The audit wasn't done correctly. The recount wasn't appropriate. There was barbecue sauce
on the ballots and they still counted, you know, to today. And we've got more issues than we saw
in 2020. And that sham election, we have just a blatant sabotaging of Election Day, a disrespect, a disregard, a disenfranchisement
of Election Day voters.
None of this is true.
And if they sit there and sign their names to this sham certification, history will never
forgive them.
They will go down as as three of the very worst in history.
Yeah, it was signed.
Katie Hobbs is officially the Arizona governor elect, and she will be Carrie Lake's governor
very soon.
Now that we know, and by the way, we're at the top of the first thing to get into the
bottom of the FBI, the DOJ, and I think CIA involvement, intelligence apparatus and law
enforcement.
Steve Bannon thinks now that the
CIA is also involved. These people's brains are filled with mayonnaise. And by the way,
pretty bad mayonnaise, I would say. Apparatus involvement in the coup d'etat in the 2020
election, because remember, ladies and gentlemen, they all knew we had the receipts. This is the
thing you have to understand. We were wiretapped. They read our emails, all of it. They knew we had the receipts. This is the thing you have to understand. We were wiretapped. They read our emails, all of it.
They knew we had the goods.
They knew this is not just about a corrupt and incompetent media.
It's about this in 2020.
How does the Elon Musk now remember and Bannon almost just jumping around frenetically between
topics the entire day wiretapped us.
They spied on us. Understand what happened. It's really
simple what happened. The Trump campaign was in touch in 2016 with so many suspected criminals
who themselves were being surveilled by law enforcement that the people on the Trump side of the conversations were
incidentally surveilled in that way. It's sort of like if I right now, as part of doing my show,
regularly spoke to, say, organized crime people, the organized crime people are under surveillance.
Would it be accurate for me to say the FBI is
spying on me? No, what's happening is I'm talking to so many suspects of the organized crime
investigation. My side of the conversation is getting picked up by the FBI. That's what happened.
Ask the release of this. What's happening on President Trump's 2020
tied directly to what's going on in 2022
in Arizona, ma'am.
Well, I mean, to watch what happened over the weekend, I think what what must put out
the information he put out, I think it was a game changer.
And to watch the silence on the part of the mainstream media.
No silence.
It's just there's not much of a story there. It was revenge porn
and the Biden campaign, which was not the government at the time, tried to have it removed.
So listen, Katie Hobbs will be the governor of Arizona. That's the good news. If Carrie Lake
continues living in Arizona, Katie Hobbs will be Carrie Lake's governor, period. That's the story.
They had the audacity yesterday, yes, to certify an election for Katie Hobbs that Katie Hobbs won.
That's good news.
Kerry Lake didn't win.
If Kerry Lake somehow ended up governor, that would be a very bad thing.
And it's disturbing that we have to explain this to people.
The person who got more votes should be the governor.
It would be bad for democracy if the loser still got to be governor.
It would be a version of the participation trophies that these very same people claim
to be against.
We have a voicemail number and that number is 2192 David P.
Here's a caller with a very specific question.
Take a listen to this.
Hey, David, Sonny. Hey, question for you. So this is me, like more of a medical expert question. Take a listen to this. Hey, David, Sonny, hey, question for you. So
this is maybe like more of a medical expert question when it comes to maybe. And I, even
though I am not a medical expert, I'm glad to answer as if I were. Potential human hibernation,
the pandemic, and kind of people forced to stay indoors a long time in the winter when it's cold.
You know, is it possibly like some sort of like, how do I say, like, you get what I'm saying? Like maybe there's some topics or something.
Yeah, I understand. Okay. The idea is we've got a pandemic and in the winter it's flu season,
et cetera. I have COVID right now. As I talked about yesterday, what if I, or we, when it starts
to be flu season could hibernate? Could humans hibernate,
skip the entire flu season? First of all, if it were possible, I don't know that it actually
saves us from flu season. It might just shift it around. I'm just not sure about that. Okay,
that's number one. But number two, let's talk about hibernation. There is no evidence that is
very good that humans are able to go into hibernation,
which would be like an extended state of torpor, I think is the way that we would say.
There's no evidence of that in what would be called accepted medical science right now.
The idea is widely discussed. It's been explored in science fiction. The idea of using some kind of human hibernation or reduced metabolic state for long space travel has been talked about.
These are not new ideas, but there are only speculative commentaries that it's theoretically
possible. You can find papers that say, you know, ancestors to humans, pre, you know, pre-human ancestors had the biological mechanics
required for hibernation. And maybe with the right technology or modifications, it's something that
humans might be able to do. You know, the, the idea of cryogenic preservation for people so that
in the future, if certain diseases could be cured or whatever the case, maybe people could be reanimated. It's big topic, big business, but it is quite speculative.
And that's sort of like where the science is right now and much is being researched.
But here's another thing. Wouldn't that be very difficult socially? Because even if you could
technologically and medically figure out human hibernation,
how would that work socially and culturally and psychologically? It seems like it would be a
really difficult thing. I don't know. That's just my sense right now. But an interesting question.
Nonetheless, we have a fantastic bonus show for you today. Oh, the bonus show where you want to
make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. The money on the bonus show is just crazy. You should see it on today's bonus show.
Joe Biden has the idea to make South Carolina the first Democratic primary. What does South
Carolina think of it? We will talk about that on the bonus show. Number two, remember Michael
Avenatti? He's been sentenced to prison for 14 years for fraud. And it is wild, wild stuff.
Our friend Farron Cousins, who was brutally assailed by Avenatti, is thrilled.
And we will also talk about nine million Americans who were wrongly told that they were approved
for student loan debt forgiveness.
How did it happen?
And what's the story?
We will talk about all of it and more on today's bonus show, which you can access by signing
up right now.
Now, you could do it later.
I would do it right now at joinpacman.com.