The Young Turks - Cowboy Cosplay

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

Episode summary: "Why Not?" Reporter demands to know why Jean-Pierre won’t talk about Clarence Thomas or Supreme Court scandals. TV executives whose writers are on a picket line see the future for AI. This Texas bill would train third graders to use "battlefield" tourniquets. "Everyone over there will either be fired or indicted": Report describes war between Trump camp and defectors. HOSTS: Cenk Uygur (@CenkUygur), John Iadarola (@johniadarola) & Ramesh Srinivasan (@rameshmedia) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Stop with the questions. Celebrate. Free Marteen, Free Marting, Free Marting, Free Marteen,

Free Martin, Free Martin, Dream Party, Dreamarie, Thank you. Drop it. All right, fun power panel for you guys. Jake, Hughar, John, Iarola, Ramesh, Shirnavasa.

Much, good to have you back on the program. So guys, big, big show today. Lots of controversies as usual, lots of crimes and of political and non-political context. So we got to get right to it. So John, take it away. I will, or in fact, she will. Take a look at this. You have said from the podium that you're not going to comment on any stories having to do with Justice Thomas and his own code of conduct.

Why not? Right now, it is being, as it relates to the ethics, as it relates to that process, Senate is clearly moving forward with their own Senate procedural process. I'm just going to leave it there for now. So Biden doesn't want to come out strongly in the wake of all of these different stories that have been breaking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about his wife, about many of the other members of the court. I mean, the Senate is doing something.

So who is he to weigh in on what's going on in the country and a crisis of confidence in one of the most important institutions in American politics? In any event, look, a lot of people are taking this seriously. And some lawmakers are now pushing for an actual, I'm not going to say concrete, but at least some sort of ethical guidelines that we put on the Supreme Court. She's asked about that and it doesn't look like Biden is going to take part in this. President believed that there should be a code of conduct for the Supreme Court. So I know I've been asked about ethics and this question many times before. Senate is currently moving forward with a process. We're going to leave it to the Senate for now.

But his own commission on the Supreme Court, which he established a shared report in 2020. Understood. It said a code of conduct for the court would bring the court into line with the lower federal courts. etc. Did the president read that report? Understood, the president has seen the report. We have said many times before. He appreciated the bipartisan commission that came together and put the report together, put the report that you're just speaking of.

As it relates to this moment in time, Senate clearly is taking some sort of action. They're going through their process and we're just going to leave it there for now. Look, I don't know at this point if he forgets that he's still in office, that he is, you know, the head of a branch that is supposed to be co-equal against the other two. The idea that if two of them are bickering, he should just stay out. It does seem cowardly, I will grant you that. But I guess he just doesn't like drama. He just doesn't want to get involved because they're fighting and all that.

But when he's even running from his own administration's report implying that there should be a code of conduct, that is just horrible. To say they should have a code of conduct. And then when many stories come out demonstrating how deeply necessary it is, now you don't want to say anything. Look, I'm not, I can only speak for myself. I'm not expecting that he's necessarily going to heavily weigh in on every single new report from ProPublica. But he can't say that there should be ethical guidelines. He can't imply that every single person operating in the U.S. government should be under some sort of code of conduct.

Then that is, that's particularly cowardly, even for Joe Biden. Yeah. So before I get to the essence of it, let's note a couple of fun things in there. Has the president read the report? Significant pause, the president has seen the report. In other words, of course he didn't read it. And then, but he appreciates the bipartisan commission. That could be Biden's defining quote. Well, we put together a useless bipartisan commission that we don't intend to execute at all. But he appreciates that they did this useless useless project, which he now no longer supports because he won't publicly back it. Doesn't appreciate enough to read it. Yeah, well, look, I get it. The president can't read every 90-page report, et cetera. So I'm not, you know, overly emphasizing that. But you asked for the useless commission.

It actually came up with something. This is the one time to use it. And you're choosing not to use it, which then tells me that every time you ask for a bipartisan commission, you're thinking, I don't care about it at all. This is just an attempt to ignore the issue instead of addressing the issue, which, by the way, for anyone following politics is obvious unless you're a mainstream media reporter. Okay, so now finally to the essence of it, look, is Biden soft and he doesn't want to criticize the Supreme Court or conservatives? Or is he just totally indifferent?

Like, the Supreme Court is corrupt or not? What difference does it make to me? Or is he afraid of conservatives? And so like, but they might say something mean about me by criticize Clarence Thomas. The correct answer is D, all of the above. And that is the defining characteristic of Joe Biden. He is soft, afraid, and indifferent, which might be the most damning. Because guys, look, you can tell, just think about if you were the president. And Clarence Tom, I mean, we have a story later in this show. We've already done like half a dozen, but there's a new one out today about how Jenny Thomas is taking even more money from the same guys that Clarence Thomas goes to vacation with. Like when they're paying,

her a salary and they're trying to make sure that no one finds out, that is the equivalent of a bribe. I mean, that's not apples and oranges. That is apples and apples, okay? And so the president of the United States doesn't care that a Supreme Court justice is being bribed, let alone the Supreme Court justice on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Well, that just tells you, I'm either a coward or I don't care about anything. I'm already president. I'm just worried about my legacy. I don't want anyone bothering me. And as you can tell, I think it's both. I really do. Ramesh, what do you think? Yeah, it's very telling. I mean, you all on the young Turks, and I know, Jenk, you've mentioned this many times. The issue really is

corruption, right? There's corruption is rampant in our, in our government, but on many different levels. You know, we have the leading Republican candidate, former president, who boasts about us corruption and lies constantly. We have many accusations levied against the current president about corruption. And so when corruption actually occurs in a highly demonstrative way involving one of our Supreme Court justices, but actually quite honestly more than one, as we can see with the probe recently, it's in the interest of the president, I believe, as a leader of this country, to opine on his thoughts on this corruption, right?

So President Biden expressing his views about the dangerous of corruption in the judicial branch is not the is is is is totally in line and it's not the sit and that doesn't replace the legislative bureaucratic process that's likely to go nowhere in terms of possible impeachment. So I think that this is yet another example of the president with some sort of calculus which we're not exactly sure of perhaps it's all the things you just mentioned chink deciding not to take a stand. But we've seen that again and again and again. I mean, for whatever reasons, he likes to invoke bipartisanship in relation to almost everything he does. And very rarely does he call out the elephant in the room, which is that Washington is

corrupt on almost every level because it's all in the pocket of corporate elites. Yeah, so we're gonna turn in a moment to some of what some of other politicians who aren't running as fast as they can like Joe Biden from this story are saying. But it really is this entire cycle ever since that first story from ProPublica has been such an amazing reminder of the unprecedented times we're in. I think, Jenk, you've been following politics for a lot longer than me. So I'm just curious, but I perhaps naively assume that if all of this stuff had come out about a Supreme Court justice 15 years ago, something would have had to have happened,

right? I mean, those seats were super important back then, obviously, but it does feel like we We've reached a point where there is not a single thing that could come out that would get Republicans to be like, oh, well, you know, we really don't want to lose the Supreme Court seat, but I mean, this is beyond the pale, so I guess he's got to get impeached. There was definitely a time where they would have done something, right? Yeah, so you're referring to two different things, John, just to be clear. So 40 years ago, everyone would have been genuinely outraged on the right and the left, and there was a consensus that corruption was frowned upon.

ironically or appropriately Supreme Court decisions. So you have a pre-corruption and post-corruption thing. It's not that pre-corruption everything was hunky-dory. It's just that they legalized corruption in 78. So before that time, there was a uniparty in some ways that were bad, but a unit party in some ways that were good, that people actually thought corruption was a bad thing. They would certainly say that in public.

They would act in unison. How do I know these things? Well, number one, you just study history. Number two, but you could all know it too. It's super obvious because it was the Republicans who agreed to kick out Richard Nixon. They told them, no, no, no, you're going to get impeached and convicted by the Senate. The Republicans are going to agree to your conviction, right? So there was a time when, hey, you break into the other guy's headquarters of steal their documents,

you're going to get thrown out of office, okay? And that's for the president of the United States. Certainly they would have done a first Supreme Court justice as well. And then there's a second thing that John is referring to, I think, which is 15 years ago, there still would have been the more of a Mitt Romney faction that would have said, no, no, no, this is a bridge too far. This is just the most brazen corruption we've ever seen in the Supreme Court. We have to do something about this, right?

Now, though, that's gone too, because we're also in the post-Trump era where Republicans say, no, a Republican can break any law, commit any crime, and we will never, ever hold them accountable. And it's not, it's not debatable. Clarence Thomas or Donald Trump or any of these guys could have literally murdered someone and the Republicans would not budge. That is not 1% high probably, okay? I mean, Trump has done every, he's broken like dozens of laws impeached twice. And he attacked the Capitol and nearly got those congressmen and senators killed.

They were chanting to murder the Republican vice president. the Republicans would not yield. They let them off the hook. There's nothing that will get you held accountable if you're a Republican. That's the phenomenon from 15 years ago. The one from 40 years ago affects all of the elites. And so now there's a much lower standard of ethics and there's a massive corruption. And I actually think, Ramesh, that's part of what's happening here, that the Bidens of the world assume corruption.

Like they think it's not that big a deal. He thinks, well, I mean, oh, my, I'm going to criticize Clarence Thomas because he's taking all this money from Harlan Crow, but do you have any idea how much money I've taken from billionaires, right? Now, maybe not directly, although, you know, with Trump, it was kind of go to his properties, et cetera, goes into his pocket. Racial Walker, it was directly. But with Biden, it's campaign contributions, but that goes to his power, fame, and eventually wealth. So I think that people in power allow others to be brazenly corrupt. Because they're worried, well, if I do something about him, then they might come for me next. Yeah, I was just going to add and say that I completely agree.

And in essence, the election of the former president really just sort of let the dogs out, so to speak, in the sense that what many of us knew, which is that our government is not really standing and serving our people, it's not a demos. It was doubled down on by this, you know, kind of corrupt wannabe authoritarian mafioso dude, right? So in a sense, by just calling it all out, there is sort of like this kind of normalizing of the whole process. But I think it's worth noting that that should it, that is actually the opposite of what we need if we want a democracy, right? A democracy is not about Biden being in power or Trump being in power. It's about resolving and trying to stop this corruption. We have a representative democracy that itself is not a direct democracy.

That's okay, but at the same time all this corruption in the middle is really the issue. And I just think it's worth noting how several of the Republican justices in the Supreme Court came to power with corruption associated with their records and corruption associated with their so-called nomination process, right, from Kavanaugh to Thomas himself, right? decades ago. And we can keep going with that. Yeah, Amy Coney Barrow, the situation obviously, not what they had said it should be. But let's move on a little bit. There are some Democrats that are pushing for the Supreme Court to dial back just a little bit, the explicit corruption, the accepting of massive bribes. You've got Dick Durbin actually requesting that the Chief Justice John Roberts testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That's not going to happen. Who does Dick Durbin think he is?

I mean, it's just the Senate, after all, Supreme Court Justice doesn't have to come there. He's not going to. Instead, they sent a document. Here's what it is. A statement on ethics and principles signed by all nine justices said that the court was seeking to bring new clarity to how it approaches ethics issues. It said that the Supreme Court has voluntarily opted to follow the substance of the regulations for lower courts set out by the judicial conference, the judicial branch's internal policymaking body, including financial disclosure mandates, and its limits on. gifts. Now, Dick Durbin said that recent assurances from the Supreme Court in response to the ethics related inquiries were a defense of the status quo and that the justices were oblivious to the obvious, and I don't think I've ever agreed with him more.

He closes by saying the Supreme Court could step up and fix this themselves. For years they have refused, and because the court will not act, Congress must. And there's a detail in what we just described for you that I think is really important, which is all nine of them signed on to that. Because look, there have been a lot of stories of corruption that have come out over the past month or so. If I had to choose a leader, it would be Clarence Thomas. He has done the most explicit corruption.

He gets the gold star, congratulations to Clarence Thomas. Kavanaugh obviously got into his position with some incredibly concerning issues. I'm just talking about the financial ones, let alone all of his personal conduct issues. Neil Gorsuch was revealed to have also had a sort of sweetheart real estate deal. And so those are some of the conservatives, but it's not like the liberals have gotten off looking that much better, all of them appear to have been receiving for years, these cushy teaching jobs, which are effectively long term paid for international vacations, that then come with their friends and colleagues being able to go on the vacation as they gallivant around foreign

countries teaching a little bit. And we also know, so does Sonia Sotomayor didn't recuse herself from a case involving a book publisher that had paid her millions of dollars. Now, that was pointed out by a right wing blog, one would think that that would then result in the right being like, oh, okay, well, now it's bipartisan. We should do something. It unfortunately has resulted in them saying, well, now it's bipartisan. Now let's just move on to something else. But all of them clearly have issues. All of them, Republican or Democrat nominated, need to be held under far more stringent codes of conduct. And so far, you know, we could have a leader on the Democratic side, but he's AWOL. The best we have right now is Dick Durbin, which doesn't give me a lot of confidence

that something's going to happen. Yeah. So I'll address all those real quick. So Sonia Sotomayor is probably my favorite Supreme Court justice. I think she's done a great job with a lot of the rulings. And she should be held to the same standard as everyone else. And her going along with the right wingers here is atrocious. And it's just atrocious.

And all the so-called liberals going along with them is atrocious. because partly because of what John is saying, they think, well, if they get Clarence Thomas, they're not going to like my trips all across the world, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so that's already terrible, okay? And then number two, there's a collegiality. So, hey, you know, we're all friends. Sometimes we have lunch together. And so it turns out Clarence is a crook.

So I'm going to let him off. No, that's the exact opposite of your job as a judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice. So no, no cookies for anyone. And we're a rare network here that does not do things blindly based on which side we're on. So shame on those Supreme Court justices that are theoretically left wing and have signed onto this trash. Okay. And I don't care if they're friends with Clarence Thomas. I don't care if Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are friends. I don't care about any of that.

I'm sick of this goddamn corruption. And we don't agree with the right wing. That doesn't mean, oh, then forget about it. No, it means hold them all accountable, okay? That's how you deal with things honestly. In terms of politicians, the right wingers, as always, the Republican politicians are jokes. Hilarious jokes, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, implying that this, they're doing this. Poor Clarence Thomas, because the Democrats are racist.

So everybody's woke, woke, oh yeah, the racism doesn't even exist. Wipe it away from the history books, you're all woke. One of our guys, and he's deeply corrupt, oh, you're being racist. Come on, you guys are a hilarious joke. Right-wing voters. If you don't see that. If you don't see that, that's the, come on, come on. The media should never take Republican politicians seriously.

They're like the most dishonest people in the whole country by a lot, okay? So then finally on the Democrat side, there are a couple of senators that are trying, including Sheldon White House, who did a great speech about this just the other day. And it made me think like, oh, wow, there are principled smart senators. apparently on some issues, and he kept insisting on, are you guys going to regulate yourselves? If not, you're forcing us to take action because you're rubbing the corruption right in our face, right? Ha ha, they paid my wife directly. We pocketed that money and spent it all day long, and then we voted in favor of Harlan Crow and everyone else.

That is not a goddamn acceptable answer, and I don't care what stupid Democrat coincides on to it. Just one thing I want to say, which is I think the litmus test here shouldn't be about liberal versus conservative. It should be about who is willing to stand against corruption, whether they're conservative, liberal, progressive, or something else altogether, and who's willing to continue to endorse and reinforce a situation which basically is one of the major reasons why so many Americans feel cynical about our government and feel like this government doesn't work for them. Yep. Yeah. Well, lots more news where that came from. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is actually a pretty fascinating one. Just one day after members of the Writers Guild of America went on a massive strike. The first in a decade and a half, Hollywood executives as well as producers attended a panel in Beverly Hills on the topic of AI. And if you're wondering if the topic of replacing writers with AI came up, oh, you better believe it did.

One film and TV producer Todd Lieberman said, AI is going to change the world. One year from now, will there be a script written by AI? Yes. That doesn't mean that he's necessarily in support of it, but the expectation is this is gonna happen. How long is it just gonna take us to get it there? Now, some did seem pretty certain that there's gonna be people who lose their jobs in this field as well as many others as a result of AI. The chief executive officer of Fireside, which connects fans with video programming, said that while AI software will, quote, definitely take away some jobs, it will enhance creativity by making it easier for writers to do their work.

Quote, now anyone can have an idea or a premise around a piece they want to write and they can have a starting point. Now look, to be fair, I'm sure that she said other things too, but anybody could come up with a premise now. You don't need an AI to come up with a premise. At the very least, I hope that when they replace writers in the script making, that humans are still coming up with the premise at least, it sounds like there's going to be no human input from top to bottom on any of this.

One executive insisted that even though he's apparently perfectly happy to replace artists, the AI technology is not gonna replace the executive. So Rob Wade, who heads Fox's entertainment business, says it will extend to editing, all of it. AI is gonna be able to do absolutely all of these things, but there will always need to be human, quote, co-pilot in the writing process, quote, you always need an executive to give a bad note. I like when people are able to sort of laugh at themselves, but maybe also learn from it and stop giving notes that result in movies being bad.

But anyway, look, this is a serious concern. It would be even if they had reached a deal, you know, the WGA with the Hollywood Studios, but they haven't. And we don't know how long the strike is going to be, how long of an effect it's going to have, how many people might potentially lose everything. The fact that during that time, the studios appear to already be looking to the future for when many of these. people currently picketing can be made obsolete is not the look that I would have gone for if I wanted to appear to be negotiating in good faith. So I mainly want to hear what Ramesh has to say about this. He's professor of information studies at UCLA. But Ramesh, before we get to you, just quick question for you, John, you said that, that you almost

implied that that guy was joking. I think he had a sense he was joking. I think that he actually meant, hey, well, don't worry, executives will still have jobs. Oh, no, no, no. I think it was a a combination knowing joke, but in the context of, well, clearly not us. I think it was a combination thing. Okay, all right. Well, thank you. The executives still have jobs. We were really worried about that. All right, Ramesh, what do you think? It's neither the executives nor the investors who are the ones on the chopping block here. It's 99% of us, which is everybody else, right? And so my first response upon reading the story a few hours ago and hearing about this was grr. And the reason why is I, please forgive me while I go on a short rant here, I'll keep my comments short. First of all, these AI systems have nothing to do with AI historically.

They have nothing to do with intelligence. They are simply mimicking patterns of data found on the internet and correlating it with anything that we might input there, right? So it's actually big data surveillance pattern recognition is what this AI is. When I say this AI, I'm talking about GPT-3, GPT-4, and so on. So all of us providing all our data all the time without having rights over our own data, let alone exposure, transparency, or accountability around who's using such data, are providing it all for free to basically create these so-called technologies that notes how much money Microsoft invested in Open AI and GPT3 while cutting tens of thousands of jobs, right? all of which occurred at the same time period that Google meta slash Facebook and others were cutting jobs. So you can see the story here. It's delegating aspects that were of life, of economic productivity,

cutting costs, cutting people out of your business and farming it all out to privatized AI, then manipulate and monetize our data on an internet that originally all of us paid for. Now, what is going on here? That's economically disastrous. And it also, I think most importantly, or maybe equally importantly, really takes us away from what we actually are as human beings. First of all, as humans, we don't really know how our intelligence works. We also know that we are very creative as human beings, but none of these systems are creative, right? But we don't even know where that creativity comes from. Why did I choose the words I just chose to say right now?

It's not merely pattern recognition, it's my interpretation, it's my meaning making and so on. So the two things that we got to double down on being human and affirm human lives and affirm human dignity and an economy that's technologically mediated that really supports everybody. Because what these systems are are behavioral mimicry systems that lack two of the core things that I think we have as humans can call me an optimist, which is creativity and care and compassion. When I was a grad student at MIT in an AI lab, we were building absurdly, robots that would take care of elderly people and kids. Guess what? No one wanted them.

Guess what? When I interviewed leading figures at SEIU, they tell me we're actually in okay shape because nobody wants these privatized AI systems. So what's actually occurring is a model of surveillance that's intimately collecting data about us, that's mimicking patterns on the internet. Now that said, my goal is not to be dismissive of any technology, but to put it in its proper place so it supports what we all want to care about. And I think what we care about is a planet which is not going to fall apart a certain notion of economic dignity and a certain possibility for the demos to have power.

And none of those things are occurring because many of these companies, the best possible thing I can say about some of the folks in these companies is they don't know much of anything about anything outside of technology. And I too, when I studied engineering, didn't really learn much in my engineering classes outside of technology. Anything that's not considered blind technological optimization is called ethics. So but what does that even mean? So here's the key. We're at this massive inflection point and we need to push, push for regulatory activity that ensures that any technological intervention comes with a bunch of assurances for workers, laborers, and so on. And I think that's absolutely critical, right? We'd be situated in the backdrop of how the pandemic generated greater economic inequality, how the wealthiest people in the history of the world are controlling our data and these tools of mediation. You can see the huge opportunity we have right now to get this on course.

And I want us to do that. Like anything we can do, we've got to do it right now. But, Ramesh, can I ask you a question? So I, of course, greatly agree with that overall. But if a studio says, hey, listen, I'm going to use AI for a movie, and then people will either like it or they won't like it, why don't you just let them decide? What would you say to that? Well, to me, it's not so much. I think the future is one where we work with various types of, I guess we'll call it AI systems, pattern matching systems, right? But I think the point I'm trying to make is that it's not that AI systems, it's not that pattern recognition can't produce spectacular effects or create great entertainment content and so on. But it's that we have to recognize that these films and movies and forms of entertainment exist on a planet that we all live on and that more and more than ever, we need very, very deeply to support our writers so they can work with these technologies, right?

My solution is not to be a Luddite. Note that even Luddites use technology, that's worth noting, the Amish used technology. That's not what I'm advocating for, but I am advocating for a certain set of assurances around jobs and economy and data peeing people for data, whatever, universal basic dividend rather than UBI, which is an idea that Janis Varifakis has spoken about, the economist from Greece. I think I think as technologies create new innovation, we need to create mechanisms for everybody to benefit from them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Look, I also agree that I think, you know, these things aren't going to go away. I do also think that there could be collaboration,

some sort of symbiosis or something. My fear is that, you know, I think a lot of people agree that there should be some forms of regulation. And there's been enough pressure around that that Biden has announced that he's meeting, you know, with these CEOs. But the issue is that he is going to be meeting with the CEOs. He's not meeting with the writers, you know? Of course that. Like who is going to be, like they're the ones with the money. Historically, that has resulted in the regulations benefiting them.

So that's my fear. And I really think that like obviously there's different forms of, and I, by the way, I love that you point out that these are not strictly speaking artificial intelligence. It's totally different technology. I think that the way that they intersect with a lot of different industries, people are going to have very different reactions to. I think it's super easy to say like, you know, if we have self-driving cars or something that replace all truck drivers, Fox News will freak out about that because they believe that

truck drivers are, you know, inherently an important American thing and they'll defend them or whatever. So the issue is going to be, I think, what does the public think about your field? Do they believe that it has intrinsic worth? Like I think the, in the wake of this strike, there have been a lot of people have been saying, you know what? Yeah, we should support the writers. And I'm glad that they're saying that. I do have fears about the long-term commitment to that because I know how little thought people gave to those who were writing their TV and movies even before this.

Like every single person has an answer for and would love to talk about what their favorite movie is. But for how many of those people is it their favorite movie because they appreciate the writer who created it? Often it'll be the actors. Maybe it's the director or whatever, the people who made the special effects. We as a society, I think, for a very long time, have had very little respect for writing as a creative field. We just sort of take it for granted that, oh, yeah, yeah, they did it or whatever, and then the movie was made. Yeah, but the idea is the thing.

Keanu Rees was great in The Matrix, but they came up with the Matrix, you know? Special effects and everything everywhere all at once were amazing. But the concept, the writing, gee, it's so complicated. But we don't respect that generally. Yeah, so, look, I think it's an endlessly interesting topic, both because of the intellectual, you know, arguments and I would argue on both sides, but, but also because of the implications for the economy and our jobs and how deeply this will affect society. You know, and I think that Ramesh asked the right question, you know, is this intelligence?

What does it mean when we say intelligence? How much of that is creativity? For example, I said on the other day on the show, the minute they had, The computers playing chess against the humans and everybody would, as universally was thought in the beginning that the computer could never beat the humans. I thought in minute one, there's limited number of permutations on a chess board. Humans have absolutely no chance in the long run. Of course the computers will beat us, right? But, and you, by the way, I was a TV writer for a number of years, but I will tell you, when you look at a lot of those scripts, unfortunately, you see a limited number of permutations.

Okay, so we've all watched this stuff for a long, long time. 90% of it is very formulaic, okay? Now, having said that, the 10% that's fantastic and spectacular, the examples that John gave, that's a turn of creativity that I would be surprised a pattern recognition software could do. So I think, but no matter what happens, there's a lot of rote exercises that in many different, different fields that AI will be used for, that freight train is definitely headed in our direction.

And talking about, and honestly, it's the first time I heard it, and I'm going to read a lot more into it. But that concept of universal dividends as opposed to income instantly was super interesting. Because like, for example, and I don't know what the theory is, but right off top of my head, if you said to me, hey, I'm going to give you an income that, you know, I would be a little hesitant. And I've had those debates, but if they said, hey, I'm going to give you a dividend from the oil companies for the cost that they imposed upon you through climate change, I'd go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Give me the dividend right now. Right. So, and that's on a slightly different issue, but on AI, you could see how the ramifications of that would play out as well. Yeah. So the dividend idea is the idea that any sort of corporation or massive privatization that leveraged public investment owes some sort of valuation. or dividend part of the equity of that business. It could be a small amount to the public. That's Yanni Svarfakis' idea, not mine, but note that universal basic income,

which somehow gets embraced in somewhat liberal circles, was actually an idea proposed by Milton Friedman, as you all know, a right-wing economist, and is actually the best been possible to corporations, because these corporations are completely resting their value on our data. So we're worthless. Then they are going to also go down go down in flames. And I think just the other quick point I want to make is the so-called creativity that we experience with these AI systems is because they have so much data, so they have emergent effects. This is how complex adaptive systems work. I won't get too nerdy about it, but it's so interesting. Hungry now. Now. What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,

Grab an O. Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. You know, these AI systems have been what we call hallucinating, essentially tripping out and going insane. We saw that with Kevin Roos' conversation with GPT3,

which asked him to leave his wife. said he wanted to set it wanted to be free and the way opening i dealt with that was filtering conversations they always deal with it without with by filtering rather than designing it in a progressive way and then just the last thing i want to say because this is such an exciting interesting topic for me it's what i work on is this is not about blaming the internet this is not about blaming technology um i loved couch surfing when it was out i don't know how many you guys used it or whatever but it was like think about what Airbnb is relative to couch surfing If you throw couch surfing through the political economy of stock market valuation,

corporate sharks, and people who are just interested in gathering as much data as possible and exploiting transactions, you get Airbnb, right, which with terrible, terrible effects in terms of effects on neighborhood's gentrification, not wanting to be regulated and so on. So this is internet experiments that bring us together and share our data and allow us to understand patterns from one another are wonderful. Note opening I started as a nonprofit. Musk himself gave money to it. Musk is mad about opening it, probably for his own, you know,

pity party because he's not in on that scene right now. But at the same time, this is this was set up as a nonprofit, so called open public alternative to Google's massive investments in AI. So don't think of AI also as merely open AI or GPT 3 or 4 recognize that all these companies, including Google, including Baidu and Alibaba, the Chinese companies, are all in on this game of behavioral mimicry through surveillance and pattern recognition. Fascinating. I mean, I wish we could do the full hour on it, but unfortunately there is other

news. We're going to take our last break of the hour and jump back to a couple of really fascinating stories. All right, back on TYT, Jank, John and Ramesh with you guys. Chris Birch gifted five young turks membership, so continues to be an American hero. Rochelle Van Yadden and the American Hero Act by also gifted five Turks young turks memberships on YouTube. And JM just became a member and has part of us. So thank you guys. We're trying to build a community here that cares, that's.

smart, wants to know the facts, and is deeply engaged and is strong enough to fight for positive change. So every member does that along with us and we love it. You can hit the join button below the video in order to become part of our community or go to t.com slash join. All right, John. Okay, let's give him some fascinating news. When a former top communication staffer for Donald Trump announced back in March that he was going to be joining a super PAC that was supporting Governor Ronda Santis' presidential bid, this was massive news on the right wing, and it has led to a ton of drums. This is Matt Wolking, who led Trump's War Room Rapid Response Operation back in 2020, considered to be a very important operation and an

important part of that operation. So he tweeted at the time when he announced he was leaving to go with Ronda Santis, Trump was the president we needed eight years ago, but to make America a great again, our movement needs a disciplined leader who wins instead of loses, never backs down, fights smart, and puts the mission before himself. Every bit of that is now an attack on Donald Trump. I don't know what the reference to eight years ago is. It wasn't that long ago, was it? But anyway, he's now betting on Ron DeSantis. And he better hope that Ron DeSantis wins, because if he doesn't, there's going to be some consequences. Trump loyalists are promising that former Trump staffers who work for DeSantis

will face the ex-president's considerable appetite for revenge, which he very much has. One Trump advisor told The Daily Beast, recalling Trump quipping that his own camp isn't sending their, quote, best and brightest or geniuses to DeSantis's orbit, quote, he used to say that about Mexico too, the advisor added. in Republican circles, comparing someone to anything having to do with Mexico is about the most vicious insult they can come up with. So if I was Matt Wolking, I would be a bit worried. Another source that's spoken to Trump in recent months said that he was, quote, laser focused on destroying the Florida governor and ensured that DeSantis staffers would be unable to get a job

in his operation moving forward, basically saying don't even dabble with him. Okay, you go for me or you've got no future. And here's what Matt Wolking has to say. about this whole thing. Ron DeSantis is a conservative winner and undefeated fighter who represents the future. No one in their right mind who wants to see Biden out of the White House would work for Trump now. In the near future, everyone over there will either be fired, indicted, or working for Laura Lumer anyway, which that's pretty good. I like that. That's strong hits. But anyway, look, there is a big choice to be made. Like a campaign needs a lot of people working on it if it's going to be serious and have a chance.

Rod DeSantis needs to win over a lot of people, and it's not like there are a ton of people operating in cutthroat right wing politics who haven't made clear whether they like Trump or not in the past. And now, look, Rod DeSantis is probably going to have a lot of money. It might seem like an appealing thing to go work for him, but if you're potentially torching your future, that is a tough choice to make. What do you think of this? Yeah, so I think this is an interesting story on a couple of fronts.

Number one on the substance of it, the defectors, are they right about Donald Trump and go and going to the sense? Well, it depends. What do you mean? Are they right about how mental he is? Of course they are. Every person who's ever worked with Trump knows that he's a lunatic. In fact, Bill Bard today, his former attorney general, said it's about Trump. It's a horror show when he's left to his own devices. And that I think accurately sums up what every, Every person who worked with Trump, but who no longer supports him, says about it. They walk out, they all walk out with their hair on fire going, you guys don't get it. You guys don't get it. This guy's a lunatic, like one incredibly malicious, too incredibly dumb.

And like, and lastly, mentally unbalanced. His own cabinet considered using the 25th Amendment, I guess. So if you're anyone with half sense in terms of even your right wing, your conservative, you want those policies to pass, et cetera, you wouldn't work for Trump. Now, having said that, are they right in strategy? Not necessarily, because Trump's got like a 30-point lead. He's enormously populist in a populist time, especially in the Republican Party. And he's a vicious fighter and really good at it. And so so far, meatball runs countered with nothing and meatball zero. Okay? So going over to his team, I know they got like a billion bucks over there.

If they don't now, they will soon, okay, but they have tons and tons of money. And yeah, you'll make money in the short term, as John said. But if you cross Trump, he will not have you back ever, right? And so, well, unless you go and kiss his ass and prove your loyalty, et cetera. So that's a separate conversation. But will he consider you a defector and try to eliminate your career? Absolutely. Is that correct political strategy?

Sorry, but it is. So you know what it does? it scares the, I'll put a polite, he scares a bejeezus out of people. And by the way, if you're a Democrat, you're like, oh, it might be correct political strategy, but it is immoral. Are you sure? Because that's the same strategy Nancy Pelosi uses. Nancy Pelosi said, if you work for a progressive in a primary against an incumbent, you will never work for the Democratic Party again. You tell me the difference between that and Donald Trump. And by the way, also show me a mainstream media reporter who's ever pointed out

That's super obvious fact. Yeah, I mean Trump, Trump is a very unique figure in his ferocity in his combativeness in how quickly he can insults people. And obviously, at least previously how viral he went across many different media platforms, you know, whether they claim to dislike him or not, he was a great resource for the CNN's and MSNBCs of the world. And I think we should call it out for what it is. And because he said so many hateful inflammatory and false stuff all the time, it would go viral across media platforms, social media and technology platforms. As he just said, you know, I don't need me to say it. Everything is personal for this guy. He's has psychopathic tendencies from what we have seen.

But I think it's also worth noting how unimpressive Ron DeSantis is that he's so far behind. Of course, he hasn't formally declared yet. But what does he have in terms of a campaign when he's. He lacks, I don't know if the word is charisma, but the ferocity and the brutality of Trump. Because Trump takes everything personally, he will go after and try to destroy anyone who he claims doesn't bend the knee for him. Descensus doesn't have much going. I mean, he just keeps saying woke, woke, woke, woke, which itself is a fabrication of elites and is perpetuated by social media. But more on that way.

Yeah, and look, DeSantis theoretically has his culture war wins, his like his reputation. as being a guy who does the culture war. Well, Trump just demonstrated earlier this week how easy it is to just steal that entire thing. DeSantis' whole thing is taking on education. Trump announced in a video that he's going to literally take away the endowments of woke universities. He just hopped right over DeSantis into Crazyville and the Republicans are going to love it. So yeah, I think DeSantis is in for a rough time, particularly because while up until this point, we're going to add just a little bit of fun to close off this segment,

This has been about, like, is this a good decision for them? But is this a good decision for DeSantis to get the people that he's getting? There's some interesting stances on that too. So some are saying that like these people, the actual ones going there, are just obsessed with like making the news of the fact that they have joined DeSantis. One source told The Daily Beast that they call it masturbating to reporters. This is all for Jeff Rose Pleasure and Bank account. That's the GOP strategist working for DeSantis. So they're just doing all this to kind of look cool, not because it's going to help him win.

And they very much disagree the two sides. The pro-Trumpers and the pro-Dosantis is about the sort of war that's coming. So one said, Desantis operatives are taking lame shots at Trump and then talking to Trump operatives like, this is just the job. We're still cool, right? Meanwhile, Trump operatives are plated to rip out DeSantis's liver to eat it with a nice kianti before making sure everybody who signed on to work for him is permanently relegated to the never-Trump hinterlands of low-dollar political consulting. They conclude by saying they're dealing with savages and acting like it's a game.

These people are playing for keeps and the dissimps aren't waiting for it, or aren't ready for it, I should say. That's 100% right. That's one of the most accurate quotes about politics I've seen in a long, long time. And that's why Trump beat Hillary Clinton. That's why he only barely lost the Biden, even though he was one of the worst, not won it. He was, well, George W. Bush makes a run out of it. One of the worst presidents in American history. Because in politics, being vicious is the correct strategy. And the Democrats will never, ever do it, at least the establishment Democrats. That's why they get their asses handed to them as they're trying to go high while Trump is taking out their knees.

So, yeah, one side's like, we're still all the establishment buddies, right? Corruption is good. We're all going to just pass the jabs of the money around and screw over the middle class of the poor, right? And other side's like, no, no, we're going to do that, but keep all the money after we murder you. Okay, politically, maybe, okay, so I got news for you in almost any field, the savages are going to win, okay? And so this reminds me, I mean, this is going to be an interesting analogy. But post-invasion Iraq, where the idiots in Washington were like, oh, now they'll be throwing roses at our feet because we have given them democracy, right? And I was like, no,

you've given them chaos. And you know what comes out of chaos? Savages, okay? And between savages and moderates in a war, the moderates almost never win. The savages always win. And that's why the insurgency raged on for a decade as the most extreme people in Iraq kept winning and winning and winning. And good news America, now the equivalent of that politically is here at our doorstep. That's the Trump guys. And if you take them lightly and you try to play patty cakes with them, they're going to rip your face off. And that's exactly what I wanted to say. which is emotion and affect and cults of personality and, you know, kitchen, you know, our sort of soap opera like culture do matter in politics and do affect

people's votes. So for it's really, really important that Democrats don't continue to do what they were doing, which was essentially supporting Trump back candidates, even though many of them lost, thankfully, in the midterms. Yeah. If Trump is reelected, we know how disastrous that will be. And remember, My assessment is many of the votes that went to Biden was Trump messed up COVID so badly. People were too, so tired of all the chaos and the craziness. They're like, okay, we just need someone normal, boring, get back to the good old, good old. But that is not the situation here.

Polls show that they're in a dead heat already. And if you look at Trump's interviews, including the one with Tucker before he got canned, is he is ferocious. And he is, I wouldn't say on point, but he has some pretty fiery talking points about everything from Afghanistan to inflation. Yeah, well, we're rapidly running out time, but this last story is too good. So whenever we're ready, why don't we just jump right into this? So whatever the hell that is, it represents Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi announcing that he's running for reelection.

This is how he chose to announce it by having this deep faked version of his, I'll call it, a face. put on to Clint Eastwood's character in the Dollars trilogy. It's the man with no name character, and he's going through and he's gunning down a bunch of people. It's fun. Of course, many have pointed out that there's kind of a pretty big gap between the man with no name and Tate Reeves. This one tweets as kind of disingenuous when in real life this guy looks like live action Peter Griffin. See, that's funny. That's funny.

The ad's not funny. It's particularly not funny when you recognize that this guy, Tate Reeves, who tweeted that out and appears to have this fantasy of gunning down a bunch of people. Apparently not funny when you think about that four days ago in Mississippi, there was a mass shooting in an after prom party where two people were killed and four more were wounded. Back in February, a man armed with three guns shot his ex-wife and five others during a rampage during a small Mississippi town. In March, there was a deadly shooting in the parking lot of a Blackwell grocery store. One person died, five were wounded, multiple A.R. 15s were used. See, in Mississippi, there are already other people, Tate Reeves, who have fantasies of going on rampages and gunning down a lot of people. The fact that you're dressing up in fun Clint Eastwood cosplay is a little bit messed up when you consider the damage that these shooters have done just in the last couple of months.

Yeah, so, and of course, people are pointing out everybody's shooting is a person of color. so now look you could he's a Republican from Mississippi so he might mean it or that's a super popular movie and he used that clip okay so but and I'm being maybe overly fair there but take that information do with it what you will but I want to read graphic two here because to me this quote bothered me more than the the silly little ad he said my friends this is a different governor's campaign that we've ever seen before in our state because we're not not up against local yokel Mississippi Democrat. We're up against a national liberal machine. They are extreme. They are radical and vicious. Really? They believe welfare is success.

They believe the taxes are good and businesses are bad. They think boys can be girls, that babies have no life and that our state and our nation are racist. Okay, see, the reason why that bothered me is because that's how an average Republican talks. The average Democrat, like Joe Biden, goes, oh, my beloved Republican friends, I love him so much. Meanwhile, this Tate guy is like shooting Mexicans in an ad. He comes out and says they don't even want babies to be alive, boys to be girls, they're calling us all racist,

and they're radical and vicious, et cetera, right? So one side's ready to fight and ready to lie about things. Who's the last vicious Democrat you ever saw in your life? Where, please? Yeah, I mean, well, yes, that's true. It's a good point by John. They are vicious to progressives. That I've seen plenty of times.

Show me one Democrat vicious to Republicans, and I'll go volunteer for his presidential campaign. Okay, so find me one, one that is vicious against Republicans. I can't find any, the softest people on earth. Anyway, so as he's talking about how they're, you know, Democrats are going to kill all the babies. We have to understand that this must be countered. So how do you counter it? I don't know who's running in Mississippi for the Democratic side, but if it's a standard Democrat, their answer to this will be, but I'm also kind of right way.

Okay, the correct answer to this is, hey, while Governor Tate was, was shooting Mexicans in his latest ad, he talked about how we're against business. In reality, we're for small businesses who his corporate buddies are destroying and he's helping with their corruption, lower your wages, destroy our local businesses. And that is among the reasons why what he calls welfare is helping your kids get an education and get lunch when they are hungry. And without that, in his way, we are ranked 49th or 50th in every category. The Republicans have absolutely destroyed this state.

They're the worst at managing. They're either deeply incompetent or deeply corrupt, but most likely both. That's how you fight back. There's a 0% chance that any Democrat will do that against Tate or anyone else. And that's why they keep losing elections in states that the Republicans have butchered. Mississippi is a disaster. All brought to you by Republicans. It's unquestionable, yet the morons on the other side cannot speak and actually tell you that.

I got worked out because this son of a bitch is going to win because there's going to be no counter to his idiocy. Sorry, Ramesh, go ahead. No, not at all. I couldn't agree more. I mean, one of the highest poverty rates in the country, one of the poorest public health outcomes in the country, one of the poorest education levels of the country. This is a state that has many aspects of life deficiency because of consistent Republican leadership. And they should be called out with facts and with that same ferocity that you just shared.

I think it's worth noting that this guy, while he has another absurdist stunt and just tries to go one identity category after the other to attack, attack, attack, which is the strategy of just attacking various sorts of boogeyman antagonists to rile people up and just say, okay, I'm so scared, but better just go with you. You're the tough guy. But notice at the same time, this is within a week of when this guy has deployed the state police department to infiltrate Jackson, which is, which is, you know, Lubumba, 80% progressive mayor, 80% black. So what this guy is doing at the same time is essentially some sort of neo version of a martial law system wherever black people are.

So it's really obvious what this guy is all about. And he needs to be exposed for being a horrible in so many ways. Yeah, unfortunately, we're way out of time, guys. So everybody check out John on Damage Report that leads our programming starts at 10 a.m. Pacific 1 o'clock Eastern, everybody checked that out every day, Monday through Friday. And Ramesh is a professor at UCLA, he is a professor of information studies. I don't know how you check that out. Enroll in UCLA.

But Remez, thank you for brilliant and joining us as always. I love it. Thank you for having me. All right. We'll be right back, and we've got a very controversial story of a choking death in New York, and that is going to bring out emotions on a lot of sides. We'll be back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more

by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.