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)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:01:07 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.
Starting point is 00:01:55 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.
Starting point is 00:02:36 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.
Starting point is 00:03:15 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
Starting point is 00:03:48 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
Starting point is 00:04:32 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
Starting point is 00:05:26 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
Starting point is 00:06:17 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
Starting point is 00:06:59 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
Starting point is 00:07:51 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
Starting point is 00:08:41 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.
Starting point is 00:09:30 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.
Starting point is 00:10:20 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.
Starting point is 00:11:02 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
Starting point is 00:12:01 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
Starting point is 00:13:03 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.
Starting point is 00:13:53 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 us at all. One of our sponsors is Helix Sleep. I have been sleeping on a Helix mattress for years and I always recommend it to friends. You'd simply take this Helix sleep quiz. It asks you about your body type, your sleep position, whether you have back pain, and then Helix will
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Starting point is 00:17:03 That's athletic greens dot com slash Pacman. That's athletic greens dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. The David Pakman show is a community funded program. It's funded by the audience through the membership program. You can find out about the membership program and of course, sign up very, very quickly and easily at joinpacman.com. You can also use the coupon code 24 starts now to get yourself a discount. Members get access to the daily bonus show, an extra show we do every day for our members. You also get commercial free audio and video streams of the show, invitations to the members only town hall events and much more. Thank you so much for joining us. Very quickly paid that off, never disclosed it. And the questions are growing and growing and growing. A number of important and detailed articles to look at, including a Forbes article called
Starting point is 00:18:13 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.
Starting point is 00:18:38 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.
Starting point is 00:19:18 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
Starting point is 00:19:57 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
Starting point is 00:20:40 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
Starting point is 00:21:16 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?
Starting point is 00:22:05 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
Starting point is 00:22:55 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,
Starting point is 00:23:46 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.
Starting point is 00:24:45 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
Starting point is 00:25:36 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
Starting point is 00:26:24 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
Starting point is 00:27:06 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
Starting point is 00:28:00 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 slash the David Pakman show. hands on physical components with virtual and augmented reality. Learning science doesn't need to be boring. It doesn't need to be difficult. Many kids are hands on learners who absorb the most through activities like these. It's perfect for homeschooling ages five through high school, five different subscriptions to choose from chemistry, physics, STEM, math or medicine. Thank you, too. It is really clear how this helps kids tune into what they are learning. And my audience gets 50 percent off your first month.
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Starting point is 00:30:36 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
Starting point is 00:31:51 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.
Starting point is 00:32:30 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
Starting point is 00:33:25 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
Starting point is 00:34:11 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
Starting point is 00:35:11 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
Starting point is 00:36:12 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?
Starting point is 00:37:16 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
Starting point is 00:38:19 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
Starting point is 00:39:25 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.
Starting point is 00:40:14 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
Starting point is 00:41:13 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.
Starting point is 00:42:00 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,
Starting point is 00:42:44 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
Starting point is 00:43:26 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,
Starting point is 00:44:13 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.
Starting point is 00:44:59 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. You already know that you need a VPN to protect your privacy from your Internet provider, from tech platforms, from hackers. And you've seen
Starting point is 00:45:25 a ton of ads for different VPNs. They seem similar. Which one do you choose? There is really one thing I look at. Can it be independently verified that the VPN isn't logging your activity? That's why when we were looking for a VPN sponsor, we reached out to private Internet access because private Internet access is the only VPN with a no log policy that has been proven in court not once but multiple times.
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Starting point is 00:48:07 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.
Starting point is 00:48:56 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.
Starting point is 00:49:32 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
Starting point is 00:49:54 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,
Starting point is 00:50:32 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.
Starting point is 00:51:13 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.
Starting point is 00:52:06 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
Starting point is 00:53:12 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
Starting point is 00:54:02 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
Starting point is 00:54:46 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
Starting point is 00:55:37 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?
Starting point is 00:56:22 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.
Starting point is 00:57:00 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
Starting point is 00:57:25 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
Starting point is 00:57:59 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
Starting point is 00:58:52 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.
Starting point is 00:59:22 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.
Starting point is 00:59:54 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.
Starting point is 01:00:23 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,
Starting point is 01:01:06 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
Starting point is 01:01:57 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
Starting point is 01:02:51 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
Starting point is 01:03:35 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.

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