Number two, give to w b a i.org on line to show your support.
As you know, we're going through some stuff.
I'm being super duper over simple simplistic about this.
You know, it's a lot more complex than that, but we're going through some stuff.
We need your help and will be nice if you can participate into our supporting
our financial situation.
All right, enough of that out of the way.
7 p.m.
Stay tuned for off the hook coming up.
Due to the hurricane in the area you are calling, your call cannot be
completed at this time.
Please try your call later.
Zero seven eight p.
You have reached ninety nine point five.
W.B.A.I.
Is now off the hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bum diddly bum, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum diddly bum!
And a very good evening to everybody, the program is Off the Hook, Emanuel Goldstein
here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
Yes.
You can talk a little louder than that.
Yeah, I'm over here.
How's it going?
We've got a brand new setup here, so we're testing it out for the first time.
It could be a rough road here.
In fact, for many people, we haven't been on the air for so long, this might be a brand
new show.
Yeah, our first edition of Off the Hook.
We're starting here in 2023.
Also, I should point out that Alex is joining us over in Skype Land.
Alex, are you there?
Fingers crossed.
I am indeed.
Hello, hello.
Okay, should I bring him up a little bit?
He's a little low.
Or are you going to do it?
I could do it, or you could do it.
Why don't you do it?
That way I don't have to do anything.
All right, I'll try.
Yeah, I prefer that.
Alex, you are in Skype Land, but you also are in a physical location.
What's your physical location?
I am.
Just like you, I'm in a physical location as well.
In time and space, I am in London.
It's like digital TV now.
You have a virtual channel, and you have an actual channel.
I can't really figure that out myself yet, but I will.
But yeah, you actually are in London again, and that's pretty amazing.
It's late.
It's late where you are.
Later.
It is, but it's not as late as it usually is in London, because of our word daylight
savings time.
The clocks have not been set forward an hour here yet for British summer time, so it's
only 11 p.m. here in London, when it's usually 12 a.m.
When do you start subscribing to the lunacy of daylight savings time over there?
I don't know.
That's a good question.
You'd have to ask somebody British about British summer time.
Well, you're a lot closer to a British person than I am right now.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Can't you just stick your head out the window and say, hey, boy, what day is it?
After he tells you what day it is, when does daylight savings time start?
I probably could.
I mean, I'm in a fairly busy road in Chelsea, and yeah, maybe I'll do this throughout the
course of the show.
That looks like Sharon Cross that is behind you.
It kind of looks that way.
Sharon Cross?
Yeah.
No.
The building there.
Is that a landscape, or are you actually outside?
No.
I'm in the Chelsea Arts Club, actually.
I see.
I'm inside.
Is that the place you're not allowed to use a phone?
That's correct.
So if you're in a private room in the club, then you can use a phone.
So I'm lodging here.
So it's like my hotel room, so to speak, so I can use a phone here.
Are you sure?
You're not allowed to use a phone.
Are you sure you're allowed to use a phone in a private room there?
There might be a rule.
They're very well made, but I think it's an A-OK.
But throughout the rest of the club, that is the one rule here, is that you're not allowed
to use your phone.
And readers of 2600 will be treated to some narrative about this place.
Well, don't give it away.
Don't ruin the surprise.
I'm not ruining the whole thing.
No, I think it's going to be an interesting column coming out.
I liked it.
I hope you did.
I will reserve my comment until the issue comes out.
I don't want to spoil it any more than you already have.
OK, so just for technical purposes here, because Kyle basically worked his ass off putting
this new studio setup together, are you able to hear OK over there in London, our voices?
Yeah, it's very loud, very clear.
Not too loud.
I'd say it's just right.
You're in the Goldilocks zone.
OK, good.
Of course, the real test comes later when we go on YouTube at 8 o'clock, because that's
always where we have trouble for some reason.
And if you want to join us in overtime, just go to our YouTube channel, channel 2600, and
you can call us and talk with us.
And it'll be a whole lot of fun.
Rob and Gila are out this week, but we'll be back next week.
And we have all kinds of things to talk about.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, where do I start?
There's a lot of car news lately that I think we should just quickly go through, because
there is a bunch of artificial intelligence subject matter that we have to get to.
But this car business is really something that is bothering me on a number of different
fronts.
AM radio, our cousins on the other band, AM radio, they are under real threat, because
more and more car makers are discontinuing putting AM radios in the cars that they build.
Now, this is also related to the industry going to electrification, electric cars.
Apparently, electric cars interfere, or the radio interferes with...
You can't hear AM radio in electric cars, or many of them.
Some part of the engineering noise and interference is inescapable.
I guess it's from all of the motors spinning, creating electromagnetic fields of sorts.
I don't know.
It's all related.
And when you have circuitry like that connected, getting a reception that is somewhat sensitive
to that interference becomes nearly impossible.
Well, I mean, it sounds like a them problem.
It's like, okay, that it sounds like you're not ready for electric cars yet.
If you can't figure out how to shield AM radios from the electric signals that the
cars are putting off.
You know, I had, in one of my cars years ago, a shortwave radio.
Believe it or not, I was able to get a shortwave radio.
And I noticed with dismay that whenever I would turn on the headlights, I would get
interference on the shortwave radio, which made the shortwave radio completely useless.
Yeah, people said, oh, you have to go to a radio technician to fix that.
And then someone else said, no, you have to go to somebody who can figure out how to shield
the headlights.
Basically, it all turned into work for me.
And no, that's not how it should work at all.
It should be something that is ready for the consumers.
AM radio is hugely important.
Now, look, I don't listen to AM radio all that much.
I listen to the Indian radio station, which is great.
I'm not going to give the frequency out, but people can find it.
Sometimes I listen to all news.
Sometimes I listen to distant stations from different cities.
There are all kinds of interesting things on there.
There are a lot of things that I don't like on AM radio.
I hate speech.
A lot of right-wing talk radio is, in fact, it's all right-wing talk radio, a proliferation
of sports.
But I know this is important to people, and it should continue to exist.
On AM radio, there's something about the sound of AM radio.
Not everybody gets this.
Not everybody feels the same way.
But if I hear music on AM radio, particularly classical music, there's something about that
that you just can't duplicate anywhere else.
There's just something so, I don't know, you're connected to the past somehow.
Same thing with popular music.
If you hear a Beatles song or something on AM, it has to sound crappy.
It just sounds better for some reason.
I know that sounds crazy, but that's part of the magic of AM radio.
It very much deserves to continue to exist, as does shortwave.
I wish there was more going on on shortwave these days, but right now we just have to
try and save AM radio.
That feeling, you become transfixed as though you're in a really faraway seat in an amphitheater
or a very large performance space, except it's in the air.
And I love that sensation that you're talking about.
Two questions I had was just in response to this, I wonder if a lot of the programming
on AM is now going to be looking for low power FM or FM writ large, middle of the dial, all
that.
Those interests, yeah.
Becoming non-profits, thinking religious stations, going and crowding up certain parts of the
spectrum and so forth.
The other question I had is, it seems to me with all of the interesting things going on
with electronics and miniaturization, how we have small receivers and software-defined
radios, there couldn't be some way to locate the antennas and sorts of things or shield
them like you're talking about.
And I'm wondering maybe cost is a part of this.
They just don't want to spend and so forth.
Of course.
There are solutions to all this.
If you can build an electric car, you can figure out a way to build an electric car
where you can also have an AM radio.
If the receiver's way up high and away from certain things, or I don't know how that all
works.
Ford is the company doing it, the latest company doing it.
They were joined by BMW, Mazda, Polestar?
Yeah, that's like a new, they started with like a luxury competitor.
You know what, we're not going to talk about them because they're kicking AM radio out.
We would talk about you if you weren't doing that, but we're not going to now.
So go to hell, Polestar.
It's an accident.
Rivian, never heard of Rivian either.
Tesla, heard of them.
Same thing.
Volkswagen.
We know their story.
They all are saying that AM radio is incompatible with EVs, electric vehicles, citing electromagnetic
interference from the powertrain.
Yes, that is a word, the powertrain.
So that sounds awesome and cool.
And when I was eight, I would have really liked that.
And Tesla made the same argument when it removed AM radios from its vehicles back in 2018.
You might even say they're pioneers in getting rid of things.
Electric vehicles are powered by a rechargeable battery, electric motor, and a frequency converter
that controls how much power the car's electrical motors put out by turning voltage on and off
thousands of times a second, basically chopping up energy.
This process causes electromagnetic interference that gets picked up by the radio.
Well, I maintain radios are an essential part of a traveling vehicle, and they should not
be eliminated simply because this new technology can't figure out how to not interfere.
Alex, any thoughts?
On the other hand, if the technology of an AM radio is completely useless in these electronic
vehicles, why persist with them?
Define completely useless.
How is it useless?
If there's interference and the frequency is not audible, if you can't hear what people
are saying on AM radio, or you can't hear the classical music you still nostalgically
yearn for, then what's the point of having a piece of technology that doesn't work?
Let me just throw that back at you and say, if your steering wheel stops working, do you
need that anymore?
Come on.
Well, that's a bit different.
It's a little bit different, yes.
Everything is going to be a little bit different.
But my point is that in an emergency, and I've been in plenty of emergencies where I've
been driving in a car, and I need to listen to the radio, an AM radio is what is on and
broadcasting to the local community, whether it's in a hurricane, in a blackout, in insurrections.
Yes, I've been in a few of those.
I think that AM radio has a wider range.
It is able to reach a huge number of people.
There's no reason.
I mean, what if the same thing happens to FM radio?
Would you say the same thing then, or are we just, we feel better being on FM than people
on AM?
Well, I just, you know, I'm taking a contrary point for the sake of it.
But I think that the idea that you should have technology in a car essentially solely
for nostalgia is silly.
But that's not, no.
I was bringing up the nostalgia.
That's not the only reason.
That's one of the attributes.
But AM radio serves a very important, why do you think the all-news stations are always
on AM?
You know?
I'm not disagreeing with that.
But that's a totally separate point.
You don't need high fidelity for certain bits of communication.
And I think our arguments are like ships passing in the night here.
I agree with all those points.
What I disagree with, though, is the fact that an AM radio still needs to be a critical
component of a car if it doesn't work in that car because of this interference with electric
vehicles.
Do you really believe, in this day and age, this is an impossible problem to solve?
Well, it may be an economically infeasible problem to solve.
Not to me, because I'm not going to buy an electric vehicle if I can't get an AM radio
in it.
And I mean that.
I won't.
Well, you know, that's your choice, of course.
The other thing that you could do, if you really want an AM radio, is to just carry
an AM radio with you.
If I could do that—hold on a second, Alex—if I could do that, then wouldn't that same interference
affect that AM radio as well?
I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I mean, that's something you should try.
I mean, how far afield does this interference actually cause an AM radio to be dysfunctional?
Well, do you see?
You're already figuring out how to solve the problem.
If you just have to hold the AM radio in a different part of the car, and you don't
get interference, then you've solved the problem.
Maybe.
Well, here's the other thing.
You know, and this would go towards your point of including AM radios in cars, and I do believe
that they do have a function, especially given the wider distance that AM radio covers as
opposed to FM.
But if it's the operation of the motor of an electric vehicle, this on and off voltage
that was used in the motor, that creates the interference, then one would think that
an AM radio would still function in an electric vehicle if it was turned off, if it wasn't
moving.
Right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, so that—
You're saying, turn the car off if you want to listen to the radio.
Yeah.
Or if you're stationary.
Well, you know, that sounds absurd, but actually that is a good point, because there are many
times I've listened to the radio in a car that was not on, so yeah, you could do that.
Right.
And why take away that?
I mean, imagine, you know, you're on a mountaintop, and your favorite song comes on, and you hear
it from a distant station, and we're not supposed to have those moments anymore, because Tesla
can't figure out how to make a car that doesn't interfere with AM radios.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, look, I disagree with taking them out entirely, but if they are entirely
dysfunctional, I disagree with keeping them in.
Yeah, it's disappointing that they're discussing its end and no longer implementing it in any
way without a sort of future AM or, you know, trying to introduce something that will allow
that capability to continue, that sort of legacy thing.
We have more questions, it seems.
Maybe someone can write in, oth at 2600.com, tell us your opinion.
Is it totally out of the question, just because of the way the frequencies work?
Can someone please explain what this pulse, what kind of interference it creates?
Are there other things that can be interfered with?
What other concerns are actually being raised, perhaps?
Is that something that you should consider when purchasing an electric vehicle, if you
have some sort of medical device and other thing?
Look, AM radio has been around for a hundred years.
There has been all kinds of interference that it's dealt with in that period of time.
Is there another suitable frequency that potentially could be repurposed or...
Well, they're not going to move the AM band.
...complement it?
I mean, you have to work within the frequency range that's already allocated.
So there's no real way to get around that.
And if it's just impossible because the field is so strong, I mean, typically there's like
a powertrain, what they mean is like a motor in each wheel, like independently, it's not
the same as like a central engine in...
We've been to the moon, we sent rovers to Mars, we collided with an asteroid and knocked
it off course.
We can fix this.
We can figure out how to make a car not interfere with an AM radio.
It's just a question of, do people think it's important enough?
I think it is.
I think AM radio is something that should be preserved and is quite useful, even though
most of the stuff that's on it is, you know, things I don't listen to.
But I don't think that should be the reason not to pursue something.
Anyway, moving on.
That was meant to be a two minute story there.
Have you heard about this?
This is also a very quick mention here.
But Volkswagen has this service called Carnet, and there was this kid who was missing, basically
in a stolen car.
Okay.
Hold on a second.
The kid didn't steal the car.
The kid was in the car.
The car got stolen.
And they're searching for the stolen vehicle and an endangered child.
And what do the sheriff's detectives do?
They call Volkswagen Carnet to track down the vehicle.
And you know what they did?
Carnet said, yeah, we can't do that unless you pay for the service.
You got to pay to have the tracking device activated in Volkswagen Carnet.
See, Carnet lets owners track and control their vehicles remotely.
According to a Chicago Sun-Times article, the Carnet trial period had ended, and a representative
wanted $150 to restart the service and locate the SUV.
The detective pleaded, explaining the extremely exigent circumstance, but the representative
didn't budge, saying it was company policy.
That representative is looking for employment.
If anybody has the need for a firm and resolute person who does not back down, well, they're
available now.
Yeah, this is the kind of stupidity that you see when these services are subscription services
and you have, you know, people who are obstinate, who don't recognize when an emergency is.
I mean, it doesn't surprise me, though, entirely, because this is sort of like it's a embedded
cellular receiver of sorts that has some kind of virtual SIM.
So it's attached to some kind of carrier that the car manufacturer has like a bulk
subscriber commitment to them.
So there probably is some process to activate it.
If it was not being paid for, it seems like they do actually want to collect some money
to initiate a new subscription via whatever third party they have sort of a business to
business relationship with.
I'm not defending it, and I don't know, I mean, I only defend it, I guess, in the sense
that it's sort of denying this sort of surveillance ability in some respects.
So there's that advantage, I think we might consider more than most folks.
But I don't know.
What do you all think?
Is it to have just a status that every car company knows, you know, the equivalent of
Amber Alert, and you get a call from a law enforcement agency saying, this is a situation
now.
Okay, that's an effect.
We press the button and the service suddenly works without getting paid.
You know, you get the free service if your kid gets abducted.
Okay, it's a little bit of a consolation.
I don't see how that's hard.
I don't see why that isn't something that already isn't installed.
Yeah, I mean, maybe you have like a family mode or something that you can activate that
for that is where it's a default, or you opt out of it, and it's a default.
And the police, it's an emergency.
They say this is the case, and the car manufacturer has the ability to override that.
Indeed.
Yeah, I was gonna say, much like the old cell phones from the 3G networks would still be
able to dial 911 if there was no SIM or it wasn't attached to a subscription.
So it is certainly possible it was on those.
Can you imagine that?
You can't call 911 because you didn't pay your phone bill.
That's the same mentality.
That's less.
Sorry.
Alex, go ahead.
I mean, that's a little bit different in that sense, 911, I think, because it's an emergency
service.
This is an exigent circumstance that law enforcement would be utilizing to engage in, I think,
what Kyle correctly characterized as a surveillance technology.
So I think we have to be careful about espousing some kind of law enforcement and run around
our privacy rights here, even though this was a pretty egregious situation.
Hang on, Alex.
Didn't you say the parents of the child had initiated that action?
It's not the police doing it independently.
Maybe.
I don't know.
The facts of what you read to me didn't indicate anything about the parents consenting to this
or trying themselves with Volkswagen.
I mean, I do think it's dangerous to give law enforcement some kind of power to turn
on surveillance technology in a car when they believe it's an exigent circumstance.
But they're not turning it on.
The car manufacturer is.
They're using some kind of authorization from the police because the parents of the missing
child have asked them to do that.
Now, if they said, don't do that, I'm sure that would be in the story.
Obviously, they shouldn't do it in that particular case.
In this particular case, I think it's, you know, look, it seems like it's warranted.
However, I would prefer that the police go and get a warrant.
I would prefer that they go to a judge and a judge says, yes, this is a negative circumstance
that justifies you getting this information from Volkswagen.
And look, and you can do that within half an hour, an hour.
It doesn't take that long.
Yeah.
But have you ever been in a carjacker's car for an hour?
The time really crawls.
I think this this might be something where we're starting to act like that representative
who is stonewalling the people who.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think we have to have clear barriers between what kind of data law enforcement can access
about the whereabouts of our vehicles or they can begin giving some kind of pretextual justification
that looks like an exigent circumstance that would allow them to access that data when
they shouldn't be accessing it.
But why?
This is the slippery slope.
I don't understand why you're introducing warrants into this, because obviously somebody
called the cops, said my kid is missing.
Please find my kid.
Why would you need to go to a judge after that?
The cops should say, yeah, OK, you've given us permission.
We will contact the car manufacturer, get the get the service turned on and find out
where your kid is.
So if this set of parents said, I think my kid is in Emanuel Goldstein's house, would
the police then be allowed to enter your house?
It's not.
My house is not a car, OK?
This is a car.
It's a moving vehicle.
That's what we're talking about.
It's not the parents property either.
Yeah, it's their car.
It's different because we're talking about mobility.
I agree that it's different, that it's their car.
That's a big distinction.
I totally agree with that, because if they consented to law enforcement accessing this
data, then sure, right?
Then there's a consent issue.
But I don't agree with giving law enforcement some kind of back end route to this particular
data whenever there's an exigent.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about this particular situation where there's a kid missing, being carjacked,
and the parents obviously are very concerned about this, and they contact the law enforcement
people.
Having some representative say, yeah, you've got to pay us before you do that, I think
that is a real problem.
Oh, it's totally ridiculous on many levels.
On the other hand, from the perspective of the customer service representative, thinking
about it from a different angle entirely, this guy probably works for some contractor,
not necessarily even for Volkswagen, who probably has very little authority to do anything at
his discretion.
He's just going to be completely on the rails.
Yeah, they have a narrow management objective as far as fielding calls.
It's an unusual call, however dire the circumstance.
I'm with you, I think, the privacy aspects and just writ large.
This is about consumer expectations.
I think for these types of vehicles, there's probably a very quick way to figure out, okay,
what make, model, what year, what are the capabilities of it?
As customers and owners of this vehicle, they maybe have an expectation that we know it
can be found.
It has this ability to use this.
We used the trial period up.
Whatever the case, they have an expectation now, but overall, with transportation vehicles
in general, if that's not a capability of the car, that's something that the consumer
knows.
They know that this car doesn't have electronics and so on and so forth.
Yeah, that's another factor.
You should be aware what the capabilities are of your vehicle, and that's part of what
the customer agrees to when they're purchasing and subscribing to these kinds of services,
so on and so forth.
Except they let their subscription lapse, and then their kid got abducted.
It's interesting to me, the reverse.
This is paralleling some of the stories I've heard.
I don't know if you all have these vehicle leases and things that people stop making
payments on them, and the manufacturers now are able to disable the vehicles.
Do we have a story on that?
We have a story, actually.
This is our final car story.
This has to do with cars that repossess themselves.
I'm not kidding.
This is something that is actually coming out.
Basically, there'll be several warnings from the vehicle before the system initiates a
formal repossession.
If these warnings are ignored, the car would begin to lose functionality ahead of a repo.
The first lost functions would be minor inconveniences like cruise control, automated window controls
— that's trying to torture you — automated seat controls, and some components of the
infotainment system, such as AM radio — no, actually, all radio — global positioning
system, MP3 player, etc.
The next level is more serious, and includes the loss of things like the air conditioning
system, a remote key fob, and an automated door lock unlock system.
Wait, they're going to try to cook you in there?
Basically, making you not want your car anymore because it's not working.
That could endanger —
It could, absolutely.
Yeah, then they cut the brakes, and yeah.
Maybe you'll pay now.
I'm kidding about the brakes, but maybe not in the future.
Likewise, an incessant and unpleasant sound may be turned on every time the owner is present
in the vehicle.
Only when the owner is present.
When other people are present, that sound won't be there.
But when that person is there, yeah, they'll play the sound.
So if all of that gets endured by the car's owner, and payment still has not been received,
they could get locked out of the car.
The patent application — this is what this is, a patent application — states that the
repossession system computer may disable the door lock mechanism, thereby placing the vehicle
in a lockout condition and preventing a person from entering a cabin of the vehicle.
Now, there are several caveats that go with this, such as locking out the owner only on
weekends or allowing for vehicle use in emergency situations.
Indeed, the patent explicitly notes that if somebody is suffering from something like
a heart attack — it uses the heart attack situation several times in the document — then
the car could be unlocked.
How does it know you're having a heart attack?
I guess you have to swear you're having a heart attack?
It says the vehicle's onboard camera could be used alongside a neural network to determine
if an emergency situation is legitimate.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Who let the neural network in here?
We're worried about the cops, but the car manufacturers are watching all the time.
Wow.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, that's creepy.
This has been infotainment just on steroids.
You know, chips and chips and more chips.
All chips, no dip.
It's there.
It's in this stuff now.
It gets better.
It gets better, Kyle.
In some cases, the vehicle can be a semi-autonomous vehicle, and the repossession system computer
may cooperate with the vehicle computer in the semi-autonomous vehicle to autonomously
move the vehicle from a first spot to a second spot that is more convenient for a tow truck
to tow the vehicle.
The first spot, for example, may be located inside the property line of the owner, like
a garage or a driveway.
The second spot may be outside the property line, like a public road.
Not sure how they're going to open up the garage door, but I'm sure they have a plan
for that as well.
In some other cases, the vehicle can be an autonomous vehicle, and the repossession system
computer may cooperate with the vehicle computer to autonomously move the vehicle from the
premises of the owner to a location like the premises of the repossession agency.
They can also, if the car is not worth very much, just have it go to a junkyard.
They'll do that.
They'll have your car drive itself to a junkyard because you didn't pay, and have it destroyed
right in front of your eyes.
So yeah, that's what Ford is applying for.
This is another Ford thing.
They're applying for that patent to self-repossess cars and drive themselves away, and that'll
be the end of it.
Does it check to make sure you're not in it when it goes to the junkyard?
If that kid isn't in it, yeah.
I mean, that's certainly...
All kinds of bad things can happen here.
Messed up.
Mm-hmm.
Really messed up.
Alex, are you still there?
I see you.
I don't see your face anymore.
I think he is.
He is.
Okay, good, good.
I am here.
Because I want you to hear this story.
This is something that really kind of annoyed me.
Has to do with a chat GPT, as you might know.
And basically, Elon Musk has been criticizing chat GPT for being too woke.
Yeah, that's the word that the right wing is constantly using for everything they don't
like.
Now, artificial intelligence is too woke.
And the reason that he concluded that chat GPT is too woke is because it wouldn't create
a poem that said nice things about Donald Trump.
That is the acid test.
Wouldn't do it.
It did it for Biden, but it wouldn't do it for Trump.
And that, that is basically being used by the right wing as evidence that artificial
intelligence is woke.
Now, Elon Musk is an open AI co-founder who has since severed ties with the company.
He's routinely criticized them for implementing safeguards that prevent the chatbot from producing
responses that could be deemed offensive.
Now, the president, open AI's current president, actually is taking responsibility for this,
saying we made a mistake.
The system we implemented did not reflect the values we intended to be in there.
And I think we were not fast enough to address that.
And I think that's a legitimate criticism of us.
Really?
That's a legitimate criticism?
Not coming up with a poem to extol the virtues of Donald Trump?
I mean, where do you draw the line?
Let's have a little limerick about the Klan, you know?
Is there any kind of a line that we don't cross?
Let's not.
No.
Let's not do that.
I mean, yeah, there are people there that like this guy.
I know that.
But I don't know.
I mean, I have my feelings about the person, about what the person has done, and I am struggling
to find anything good to say.
And I worry, if we have this bit of technology that is able to generate all kinds of praise
for somebody who is almost universally, except for a bunch of people in this country, seen
as a negative force, where does that stop?
Where is the line, if the line is not there?
Alex, any thoughts?
Yeah, I think I have a couple of thoughts, unless I think that, in a sense, an AI can
only be expected to generate responses with respect to the data on which it was trained.
And so if it was not trained on, or rather, if there is no data in existence about the
positive things that Donald Trump has done, then you can't expect it to just generate
falsehoods and fabricate things, right?
I also think one possible explanation is that when you define, you know, what is a positive
thing, or a positive benefit, as the AI would understand those words, it might actually
be difficult for it to conjure up examples of good things that Donald Trump has done,
perhaps given the data on which it is trained.
However, and I don't want this conversation to be a referendum on whether or not Trump
did anything good at his presidency, but I think there is one very clear thing that he
did in his presidency, and I think we can all agree on, was a tremendous success.
Okay, hold on, everybody quiet, I want to hear this, go ahead.
Operation Warp Speed.
And ironically, you know, it is the very thing that the conservatives absolutely hate.
I think Trump did a fantastic job as President of the United States in getting the federal
government to work with pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine for COVID.
You got to admit, that was an initiative under him as President that actually worked
out for the benefit not only of the United States, but I think of the entire planet.
And it is ironically the one thing that bizarrely the conservatives should be taking credit
for, but yet they've latched onto nonsensical, idiotic conspiracy theories about.
Now is this something that he takes credit for as well, or is he trying to somehow distance
himself from that?
I don't know, but he should be taking credit for it, because it was a massive success under
his administration.
Well, you know, again, any administration, just because something happens under it doesn't
mean it's your fault, or that you're the one that thought of it.
But it is possible, it is possible that he came up with a good idea, and that might have
been it.
I don't know if you can write a poem based on that one thing, but there are probably
a couple of other things.
I mean, I'm struggling in my head to think of something good to say about it.
I'm thinking, okay, what I got is that, well, he grew up in Queens, and no, I mean, that's
something, that's good.
I, you know, if you grew up in Queens, that's legit, but I can't get past that, you know,
that's the thing.
Grew up in Queens.
Grew up very close to where I grew up, too, by the way, within a mile.
I was six, but still.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Oh, yeah.
Interesting.
Wow.
I'm coming up empty.
But, I mean, if you want to write something about Mussolini, for instance, I'm not going
to say Hitler, I'm just going to say Mussolini, or Idi Amin, you know, one of the milder dictators.
Well, no, he wasn't a mild dictator, but, you know, at some point, you're going to find
a bunch of people who like somebody who is truly evil, and is artificial intelligence
going to help them, you know, build up the person more?
And should we object if it doesn't do that?
Obviously, there are going to be a set of values that any artificial intelligence creation
is going to have.
You know, it's going to believe in science, it's going to believe in facts, and right
away, those two things are components that have become the enemy.
You know, science, facts, no, we're going to make our own science, our own facts.
So, yeah, I guess you could make artificial intelligence that doesn't play by those rules,
but is that useful to anybody?
I don't know.
I mean, I do tend to think that there should be maybe a bit more balance, or maybe creativity,
or perhaps fewer parameters on the basis of certain content.
You know, putting guardrails around, I think, subjective, very purely subjective values
about, let's say, the worth of a president, or political values and ideals, is maybe not
a great thing to have built into the data sets of an artificial intelligence.
But look, I think it's a very tricky issue.
I'm not entirely on one side of this or another at the moment.
It's tough.
It's tough to figure out exactly where the right place to land is.
But I do see the danger in just, you know, basically having this tool that can make anybody
look good.
You know, at some point you have to say, well, this person really isn't that good, and, you
know, take the risk of somebody disagreeing with you.
But I don't know.
It could go very badly if we don't think this through.
Yeah.
I think I just want to add, it depends on how we're using it.
If it's something that the public is going to be using widely in a sort of test, I think
that's distinct from something that might be being used in some legal firm, like a professional
or in an academic scenario where you're doing other sorts of testing.
And that, I think, goes along with this take that you've already mentioned, which is, what
are we using to train it with?
I guess the reason I'm having such trouble with this is because, as I said, facts became
the enemy.
You know, I disagree with Reagan on just about everything.
He pointed to facts, you know, like his theories on economics I thought were idiotic, but they
were theories that I disagreed with.
In Trump's case, and in many of the Republicans' cases these days, basically facts don't matter,
and you see something and they tell you that you didn't see it.
You know, I can't tell you the number of times where I get attacked on Twitter for saying
something by somebody from the right wing, and their argument against me is wrong.
And that's it.
It's the only thing they say, and they get more likes than I got for saying it in the
first place, because Twitter is now a cesspool of right-wing thought and propaganda.
That alone tells me it's a bot or something.
Yeah, it probably is.
But there are so many, like, for instance, you know, the size of the crowd at the inauguration.
That was the first one, or one of the first ones.
You know, you can look at it, you can point to a picture and say, yeah, this is not as
big a crowd as another time, and they'll simply say, no, that's false, that's wrong.
And how do you argue that?
So if you can do that for every single fact, then you can make anybody look really good,
despite the facts.
I think also something I'm just thinking about in this conversation is the ways that negative
engagement was a strong theme in social media algorithms and some of the stuff that might
be used in the data that is a part of this learning algorithm and this chat program.
But in light of that, if the preponderance of behaviors from the individual are in the
fact, in reality, quite negative, both in how they speak and are publishing and the
way they talk, their vernacular and so forth, as well as this thing we know actually is
both being boosted by algorithms and activity on these networks, but also that is just psychologically
a sort of, it is a way of getting activity because people respond in a visceral way, or they
act in a way to vent.
We know that temptation, of course, innately.
So if the person behaves actually in this certain way, and then people are responding,
this seems to me that this is really a simple answer, that they're a victim of their own
behaviors, and people are reacting.
And so there's this preponderance of negativity around that individual.
So it seems like it would, that alone would make it much harder for something to create
art that isn't in some way sarcastic or, you know, if it's being nice or a pleasant poem
about someone, most of that information might actually read in like a negative way, because
there's just not that much in the tons of behaviors and reactions to that behavior,
a lot of positive stuff to say.
Yes.
A related story, I think it's related, a Russian court has fined the Wikimedia Foundation
two million rubles, that's about $27,000, for failing to delete alleged misinformation
about the Russian military from Wikipedia.
Yeah, it's the third fine Russia has issued against the Wikipedia owner since Vladimir
Putin's invasion of Ukraine a year ago.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Russia introduced sweeping new laws
restricting what people can report about the conflict, fining or blocking websites that
spread information at odds with the Kremlin's official narrative.
The latest fine was imposed after the authorities accused Wikipedia of spreading misinformation
in articles about Russian military units.
The Wikimedia Foundation said the fines were for not complying with takedown requests for
well-sourced content related to five articles about the Russian military on Russian-language
Wikipedia.
These are part of several takedown orders and fines from Russian authorities that we
continue to receive for failing to comply with similar requests.
We have not taken down any content and already have two active appeals for fines on similar
topics.
So you see, this is what happens when you have a government that insists that what is
true is not true and what is not true is true, and they penalize and threaten people who
don't go along with it.
Yeah, this is an intimidation tactic.
Don't get this, don't be confused about this in any way.
This is absolutely a way to chill media organizations that are actually reporting facts, and this
should be met with stern disapproval among other things.
Now, what happens when there's artificial intelligence that is basically sanctioned
by the Russian government?
I'm curious what kinds of statements will be made.
Very interesting.
Any thoughts, Alex?
Yeah, I think this is really good for the Wikimedia Foundation.
I'm very proud of them and that they stood up to this and that they are standing behind
facts and the truth and not kowtowing and complying with the lowest common denominator
type of governmental intrusion and interference here.
I think it's all the more reason why we should stand behind and support initiatives like
the Wikimedia Foundation, because they're out there to make sure that objectivity and
truth prevails over intimidation and lies.
Yeah, certainly.
Absolutely.
I'm with that.
All right.
Hey, we have a letter to read from one of our listeners, and you can write to us, oth at 2600.com
for off the hook here at WBAI.
Hi, everyone.
I'm a longtime listener, potential future caller.
I love your show, appreciate so much the effort you put into it.
It's a special part of my week to take time to listen as I have been doing for many years
since streaming became a thing.
I think I even remember using real audio to listen years ago, and I always tune into WBAI
when I'm in or going through New York City.
Yeah, and we were in real audio way back at the very beginning, 1997, I think.
A while back when you were playing with chat GPT, awesome use of text to speech, by the
way, you mentioned and demonstrated another site which used Joe Biden's voice for the
life of me.
I can't remember the damn URL.
What was it?
It's absolutely creepy.
Did we have it?
Did we actually have the URL?
I think we played it.
I don't think we had a URL where you could do that.
My recollection is this was in a news story.
Yes, it was in a news story.
It was featured, but the actual technology or the site behind it, I don't know that it
was publicly accessible to the best of my knowledge.
Also, a picture bird has turned out to be pretty cool once you train it a little bit.
I guess that's what they call what I came up with, bird Shazam, and now there's picture
bird, or maybe picture bird existed first.
I don't know.
I just wanted to have something where you could identify birds by holding your phone
up.
Urban noises have confused it from time to time with amusing results.
My guess is there is no guy screaming at people on the street entry for it to reference.
That would be a good one.
At some point, I should play my instrument into it, which is a double bass, since maybe
it'll think it's a very big bird.
Thanks also for reminding me why I have zero desire to ever go to Mississippi.
That's a reference to one of the phone calls we got on Overtime concerning some shenanigans
that Republicans are doing in Mississippi with regards to taking control of courts and
policing and all that kind of thing.
Rebel notwithstanding, I look forward to the next show, David in Baltimore.
David, thank you very much for that phone call.
Of course, people can write to us, oth at 2600.com, with all kinds of thoughts.
We have another letter here.
Dear Emmanuel, all those in Skype land, those who may be on assignment, I hope this letter
finds you well.
My name is Dante, and I am a theater professional from the UK.
I wanted to take a moment to say hello to you and the host in Skype land and let you
know how much I enjoy your radio show, Off the Hook on WBI in New York.
As a theater professional, I have a great appreciation for storytelling, and I find
your radio show to be an excellent platform for sharing stories and discussing technology-related
issues.
It's fascinating to hear the different perspectives and insights from the guests you have on the
show.
As for Chad GPT, I must admit that I am quite amused and intrigued by this AI language model.
As someone who struggles with dyslexia, I find it helpful in translating my thoughts
and ideas into coherent sentences and paragraphs.
It's impressive to see how far technology has come and how it can assist individuals
in so many ways.
I've been listening to Off the Hook since I found out about the Hackers on Planet Earth
conference back in 2007.
I fell down a hacker film rabbit hole trying to watch as many good and bad depictions of
what computer hacking is like through the eye of cinema.
That's when I stumbled upon Freedom Downtime, which was one of the good films.
From there, I found audio files of the Hope Talks and started my exploration into the
world of hacking and my interest in all things technical.
I have a question for you.
I've always wondered when I could first hear Rebel from the audio timeline.
I always hear him on the radio show and the audio recording of the social engineering
talks.
Also, I was wondering if there was one last year as I could not see it on Channel 2600
on YouTube.
Everything is on Channel 2600 on YouTube, so nothing is left out there.
In closing, I must come clean and admit that I used Chad GPT to write this letter, but
I hope that it still conveys my appreciation for your radio show and the work you do.
Keep up the excellent work, and I look forward to listening to more episodes in the future.
Enclosed below is my prompt script I gave the AI for you to compare.
Best regards, insert name here.
Okay, I'm going to read what was inputted into Chad GPT.
Write a friendly letter to Emmanuel Goldstein, the host of Off the Hook, a radio show on
WBAI in New York.
Say hello to the host in Skype land.
Talk about the amusement and concerns of Chad GPT.
Say how I like the show and have been listening since I found out about the Hackers on Planet
Earth conference back in 2007 when I fell down a hacker film rabbit hole trying to watch
as many good and bad depictions of what computer hacking is like through the eyes of cinema
and how I stumbled upon Freedom Downtime, which was one of the good films, and from
there found audio files of the Hope Talks and started my exploration into the world
of computer hacking and my interest in all things technology.
Sign it from Dante, a theater professional from the UK, and ask when I could first hear
Rebel from the audio timeline as I always wondered who he was from the radio show and
the audio recording of the social engineering talks.
Add an aside asking if there was one last year as I could not see it on channel 2600
on YouTube.
In a PPS, come clean about using Chad GPT to write this letter.
I hope that you have found it helpful being dyslexic as it helps translate your ramblings
and broken sentence structures and spelling mistakes into something a bit more coherent
to get the message across.
Wow.
Okay, so that's impressive.
That's impressive, although I do think I would prefer a letter from an actual human, but
wow, Chad GPT really does do some work on building letters.
I wonder what the word count differential is on that.
It's more.
It's more succinct if it was broken a little bit.
Yeah, it's just more verbose.
Hey, we're out of time.
Please write to us, OTH at 2600.com or join us in a moment over on YouTube.
And of course, you can get there by going to channel 2600 on YouTube or just clicking
on the link that's on the 2600.com webpage.
We'll see you next week here on WBAI New York.
Good night.