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and a very good evening to everybody the program is off the hook emmanuel goldstein here with you
on this wednesday evening joined tonight by kyle yeah what and out in skype i'm sorry not skype
what am i talking about signal land we have alex you do indeed good evening well um it's um um
kind of a skeleton crew tonight and also a shorter program than usual because we're not doing overtime
over on youtube which we usually do after the show why because we're doing a call-in show today
on wbai and uh that means we're inviting people who have not called us in the past couple of weeks
to call us here so that you can say your piece we'll give out the phone number in just a couple
of minutes we have some um breaking news i guess some interesting news uh and this is kind of um
kind of interesting but you know the um notorious board known as 4chan has been hacked and and their
internal data has been leaked yeah this according to tech crunch at the time of the writing
4chan's website was not loading and users on social media reported the site being intermittently down
for hours messages on a rival message board uh celebrated the hack um with one person claiming
that the hacker responsible for the breach was inside 4chan's system for over a year
wow okay um given uh 4chan's known violent political ties this cyber attack could potentially
expose the people who run these forums uh which have become central to alt-right movements
tech crunch reached out to several email addresses that were leaked and spoke to one of the people
behind one of the email addresses uh one 4chan janitor uh and i have no idea what that means i guess
that they were what a uh maintainer of one sort or another um one of these janitors spoke to tech
crunch on the condition of a non-animity good luck with that everything is is is out in public uh they
said they are confident leak data and screenshots are all real i have no reason to believe otherwise
the janitor said um somewhat taken aback 4chan's moderation team has had leaks in the past
but this is obviously an issue of greater magnitude i'm not happy about the situation i'm sure most others
aren't either but many of us have been doing this for a long time doxing is a long-standing pastime
on 4chan and the possibility that we could be exposed has always been there he went on to say i've been
most concerned with the leaked information for obvious reasons i'd wager that the fact that 4chan
was effectively taken over by a hacker or hackers is probably worse than screenshots at least from the
perspective of the site's continued operation now uh according uh to a headline in wired suspected
4chan hack could expose long-time anonymous admins yeah so um the day of anonymity may have come to an
end uh the core feature of course 4chan provides is public anonymity to post text and images but the
platform itself does collect information about about users such as their ip addresses and as a result a
breach of the website could represent a significant exposure of data that was intended to be private
alex what do you think of that about this i think it's pretty fascinating it seems like uh
it seems like the hack or rather the breach occurred because 4chan was running some kind of
older software or an older version of php in particular in the manner in which they were
interacting with the back-end mysql database seemed to have been some kind of deprecated form
so it doesn't surprise me i think in the least that there were some attackers that had access to this
information for an extended period of time and i think that the issue of the the information about
uh personal information of these janitors and these monitorators being leaked is also something that's
going to be quite interesting to see over the uh the next couple of days and perhaps weeks because
that that seems to have been rather sensitive information for this particular board which was
really notorious when it comes to being the reason for its existence was really one of these kind of
free speech absolutist type places where you could say just about anything and um and moderation was
with a very very light touch wow go ahead kyle i uh i sent flowers and my condolences to all of them
the victims of this i felt so i was just torn up how did you know who to send the flowers so badly
i was weeping because of the leak i was just a total mess today thinking of the victims
are you done are you finished no not at all okay good keep it up but who will notice i mean 4chan's
like real life now huh uh you know what you know as soon as you said free speech absolutist i uh i was
like you mean our government what exactly uh yeah i i can't tell the difference anymore so um maybe this
could be a model for some future operations that's what i think about um speaking of um of this kind of
thing uh a ransomware gang found themselves hacked as well yeah a leak site used by the everest ransomware
gang was hacked and defaced about a weekend ago uh this also according to tech grunge the leak site
which the ransomware gang used to publish stolen files to extort its victims into paying a ransom
demand was replaced with a brief text note that said don't do crime crime is bad xoxo from prog
yeah i gotta i gotta admire that uh the site was uh still defaced at the time of the writing of
this article which was on april 7th uh it's not clear if the gang also experienced a data breach
as a result of the hack um you can't really i have much sympathy um for um uh people who do this kind
of thing finding themselves um the victims you know if their data was held for ransom boy that would
be something wouldn't it how would they react uh everest is a prolific russia linked ransomware gang
that has claimed credit for multiple hacks and data breaches since its inception in 2020 including the
theft of more than 420 000 customers data from cannabis retail chain uh stizzy huh the um excuse me
the u.s government has also attributed several hacks to everest including breaches at the u.s space
agency nasa and the brazilian government so um yeah uh that's um that's something else to uh to keep
in mind go ahead well i think i think it goes to show you too i mean that these cyber criminal gangs are
are very much not immune to i think infighting rivalry being breached themselves and this is by far
not the first ransomware gang that has been breached in some manner or another i think it was just a
couple of years ago conti which was known to be a russian threat actor group that had was really
actually quite uh i think uh pervasive when it came to ransomware operations within the united states
and targeting lots of critical infrastructure companies payroll companies etc i had um dealt with
a couple of conti incidents myself in the united kingdom and uh they were breached and all of their
internal communications and chat logs were released and it was a real eye-opener about how the negotiations
happen and so when these breaches happen they always give you some kind of glimpse into the operations of
these particular cyber criminals and i always find it really fascinating too because these operations
are usually pretty well oiled they're very efficient they're really good you know they they might not be
the best defenders but they're certainly good attackers and one of the things that always stood out to me
was that in the wake of dealing with a ransomware incident whether it was conti or lockbit or you
know some other these other actors i always found that their customer service for helping the victim
decrypt the data once a ransom was paid was absolutely spectacular and so you know well much much better
than you would get from any ordinary tech company or any ordinary tech platform i mean they really paid
attention to detail they would help you develop binaries to decrypt large amounts of data across
your entire infrastructure and so um getting any kind of visibility into the internal comms of these
ransomware groups i think is is always a good thing and it also tends to disrupt them from further
operations which is even a better thing the question though is who did it you know who's behind this
is there is there some other even darker gang that is targeting the dark gangs that do this in the first
place i could really um lose a lot of sleep wondering just what's going on out there yeah well i i think it's
quite possibly it could be a rival gang like i said there's lots of infighting within the ecosystem
within the ransomware ecosystem if you want to call it that there's there's a lot of that going around
but then also these groups tend to be infiltrated in one way or another very often by cyber security researchers
who will create some form of synthetic identity interact with the ransomware group and ultimately join the group
and and it's quite likely in my opinion that that's perhaps how one of these breaches has occurred that
somebody who infiltrated the organization decided to finally disrupt it yeah yeah definitely um when
your group is meeting be aware and skeptical of people with talent and skills you know don't don't
laud them too much because you might be playing right into their hand yeah very true very true uh more uh
do you have something else alex well yeah the other thing i was going to say is i i this does come on
the heels of i think what is is notable too within 2024 we're really it's scary how fast 2025 is going
by but uh in 2024 i think there was a an actual decline in ransomware payments to these particular
groups so i think that could be a cause of further infighting that they they could be trying to disrupt
each other so that they can have a larger share of the market for ransomware for creating ransomware
incidents which is um look if they want to fight each other that's that's fine with us right you know
our our enemy's enemy is our friend in some respects yeah yeah i think so um okay uh something else that's
going on a little bit of chaos uh zoom appears to be down yeah uh users began reporting outages
on the popular uh video conferencing platform um basically midday today um and as of a half hour ago
looks like tens of thousands at least um are still unable to um to access the the conferencing software
uh zoom has confirmed this uh outage is impacting all zoom customers they are working to investigate
and remediate the root cause and uh will provide updates when they have updates
some of the pages on zoom's website were inaccessible and the company didn't immediately respond to a
request for comment from usa today however just before 5 p.m eastern time zoom posted on twitter
that service has now been restored after the earlier outage and we sincerely appreciate your patience
and understanding but people are still reporting problems um so i guess if you had a zoom meeting
today you have a good excuse for getting out of it because um this is uh just yet another uh
technological failure i was just thinking this might be a good um a good bit of news for people
that are uh for maybe i want to say half maybe i don't know what the ratio would be but you got to
imagine there's a considerable amount of people that loathe being on zoom for whatever their meetings
are i'm sure there's a lot of people who get great joy out of their zoom interactions but there's a lot
people forced to be on zoom meetings so this could be like you said uh a relief from uh the grind of
of zooming in on your colleagues or what whatever uh interactions you're having i will say though
they're um not really notorious or uh uh uh renowned for flailing like this well it didn't happen during
the pandemic at least not to this extent yeah they were always sort of um held in high regard for their
their uptime and and capacities and stuff so this is unusual yeah yeah uh alex does this affect you at
all not really i mean i feel like i was using zoom quite a bit five years ago and and most of the
entities with which i tend to meet these days don't use zoom anymore so i haven't felt any impact
whatsoever which is i think saying something perhaps about zoom um i think a lot of large organizations
have migrated over the teams a lot of uh stodgier organizations or or those who are fans of
anachronisms i think still use webex i think more forward-looking organizations that are kind of
lighter and agile are using google meet these days um or or kind of rolling their own with with jitsi and
things like that so um yeah i just i don't i find it kind of annoying when i have to fire up the zoom
client these days so it um it hasn't really affected me but i can't say i'm i'm not surprised
that something that this eventually happened it's always a good idea to have a backup to have something
else that works in case this thing that you use now breaks down or is hacked or uh goes out of
business i mean you know i mistakenly said skype before because uh we're used to connecting on skype when
we do remote uh broadcasts like this but skype is shutting down and um that's why we're using
signal now so you know you can't take anything for granted it all can disappear very easily very quickly
all right with those um somber words um we have um we have our special phone number for people who
want to call in uh that is get ready to write it down 802-321-4225 802-321-HACK is our phone number
again we ask that if you have called us in in recent weeks please don't call us again tonight because
we want to hear from the people who haven't called us or who haven't been able to get through a number
of people say they never get through because they try and um somebody else is on the line and and
they're they wind up in some kind of voicemail hell um that they can't get out of uh 802-321-4225
so uh if if you um if if you the person calling right now have not called us then we will welcome
your call uh that would be a no we're gonna wait for the next one no you know what i i say if somebody
actually after all that ignores what we say then we know we can we can block i think they realize
that mid ring they stopped good yeah hastily stopped all right well let's pick this one up
okay this might be a viable caller all right we're not going to judge before we pick up
i'm not judging who knows people can call from other people's phones and good evening you are on off
the hook off the hook go ahead hello good evening serena pepper i'm sorry say that again could you say
that again my name is serena pepper hi serena i'm called i'm waiting wow okay where are you calling
from i'm calling from kingston new york oh wow i want to answer a question you asked earlier go ahead
hypothetically okay you were wondering who was hacking the hackers uh-huh is it possible that
anonymous has gotten their fingers into anything like this just curious i know nothing about anything but
i'm putting it out there well you know more than you think uh and uh it certainly is possible that
somebody affiliated with anonymous which is not technically a group um uh could be involved in
this or could be a victim of this or um you know you you never know you never know what's really going
on out there and then i was fascinated to hear you say that uh half a million customers from the
legal weed store steezy got hacked because i would be on that list oh boy yeah i think that's the first
i heard of that too because i've purchased from them in california and of course you have to give
them your they take your information regardless of your eligibility and it being legal they still
record all of that how widespread are they just in a certain region do you know
in california yeah are they in multiple states how big of a uh extent do they have
i am only aware of them in california but being widespread in california is probably the equivalent
of being nationwide wide on some level especially then since the legal marijuana business is not
nationwide right and you get your toehold in in california you're bigger than anybody and tourists
people coming through yeah yeah oh yeah you can get off of the train which is what i did at union
station in la and walk across the street and go to the weed store right down the block from right
down the block from the federal prison well which is probably where i'll end up so oh the irony
well um it's good to get this call from kingston kingston is the um the town with all the porches
on all the stories right oh oh oh that's so sweet that you know about our little our little canopy
from hell it's great it it definitely stands out and i think kingston has a really cool radio station
too i'm not sure about that uh i think it's a not i've actually found you guys through uh 104.1 here i
don't remember what the i should have remember what the call tag is but i can't listen to it and talk on
it at the same time okay yeah i'm aware progressive local radio station here out of woodstock which is
about 15 miles up from up the line from kingston well that's pretty awesome and it proves they have
listeners so uh i'm i'm glad to uh to hear that's going on i'm so fascinated by this option i don't
think progressive radio is a big thing and i wish it was bigger but i'd love hearing you guys and thank
you for giving me air time thanks for calling take care have a great day bye and matt that is why we
ask for new callers yeah and i'm so thankful to our um our re-errors rebroadcasters up in woodstock
yes that's how that kind of call happens and any other radio station out there that wants to
rebroadcast this show uh you have our permission i think that's all you need if if the people at bai say
no uh we'll have another conversation but i think it's okay with everybody i think it's okay with
everybody um 802-321-4225 you have another phone call go ahead and good evening you're on off the
hook go ahead it's no choice hello okay we don't we don't take prank calls either all right and um
note the number that called that number may not call us again yeah that's what happens so you're
going to find another phone if you're calling us because we're not going to accept this write that
number down whoever that was and um 802-321-4225 alex did you have something well i guess it doesn't
help that we've you know talked about spoofing caller id many many times on on this show so you
know our listeners should probably know how to get around that pretty easily well maybe maybe you'd be
surprised 802-321-4225 uh so alex i wanted to ask you about this um this whole thing with legal
firms more legal firms have caved to trump in the last week um basically um he is threatening them
uh with all kinds of um of proclamations and penalties i don't know what for how you can just do
that uh but i've heard several legal firms say that um they can easily go out of business unless
they make some kind of a deal with them and that that deal winds up being uh they're providing
millions of dollars of legal services for either him or for causes that he approves of it's the most
corrupt sounding thing you could imagine what surprises me though is is how many law firms are
simply caving to this i mean if a law firm can't make a good argument against something like this
who can you know what's left and how could you ever trust any kind of legal firm that is this weak
as a lawyer yourself do you have any any thoughts yeah i have i have a lot of thoughts about this i
mean i could spend the rest of the hour going on about how i think this is terrifying terrible idea
an abusive process abusive executive order abuse of the the office of the president of the of the united
states and that lawyers are abdicating their responsibility to ensure that the rule
of law is what governs this country not the fiat of a dictator and that lawyers should be free
to choose the pro bono causes and clients that they want to work on they should not be dictated
by a presidential fiat and and bipartisan politics the fact that these law firms are caving
i think really is indicative of of what the law firms are interested in from the outset right i mean
these are all uh from what i can tell over the last week and over the last several weeks they're all
what we would call am law 100 firms meaning there are some of the biggest firms in the united states
they make tremendous amounts of money and they exist to make money and anything that affects their
bottom line really rattles the partnership there and it's the partnership generally the equity
partnership of these law firms and the executive committee in particular of these big firms that
will make the decisions about whether or not they're going to negotiate or capitulate to the president
when these executive orders are waved around when they're issued and when they're even threatened
and the executive committee there i think is very concerned about the bottom line of the firm and not being able
to pay out large amounts of profit to the equity partners if a substantial chunk of that business
is eroded and what the president is threatening is generally to take away the security clearances of
certain lawyers and to affect the the ability of these firms to access federal buildings to have
interactions with federal agencies and then that affects a lot of law firms abilities to counsel clients that
are government contractors and that becomes a really big hit to the bottom lines of especially
washington dc based firms where government contracting is a massive amount of of what goes on and in those
in those law firms and in in many firms government contracting practice groups are the very foundation on
which they've they've been built so it's really hitting them in the purse but i think what clients are doing
now and i and i think you see this a lot with with um statements that i believe came out from coinbase
and others that they're not really interested in clients are not really interested in working with law
firms that roll over so easily to power and bend a knee to the president like this i mean would you trust a
law firm that just struck a deal with the president to really hold your interest dear and at heart and to
advocate so zealously for your causes if they can't even fight back for their own i think the answer
has got to be no absolutely absolutely all right our phone number 802-321-4225 kyra any uh fun phone calls
on there uh not yet looking for new callers uh we are having problems with one caller all right you know
pick this up whoever this is pick this up okay good evening you're on off the hook go ahead
hi emmanuel okay rebel i'm going to be very clear here we asked you specifically don't call this week
because you call every week and we ask for new people and now you're calling us every two two
seconds so i'm going to make this very clear to you it's nice to hear your voice hope you're having
a good day but we're going to hang up now and if you call back either this week or next week your
number will be permanently banned i am not going to wait to hear if you understand what i'm saying
but i trust that you hear what i'm saying and that is the end of this conversation we'll see you in two
weeks bye now for everybody else our phone number is 802-321-4225 please call because uh as you can see
it gets kind of competitive out there and uh we want to hear callers like the call we just got
an amazing call from from kingston new york well you know i know there are people listening all over
the world and you never get to say your piece you never get to express your feedback to what we do
here on off the hook to what we do and on wbai we want to hear that that's what this show is for
we only do them once a month and we have a call good evening you're on off the hook go ahead
hi how are you doing good how are you where are you calling from i'm calling from woodstock i'm
listening on the same radio all of our listeners in woodstock that's fine with me it's possible
it's possible everybody is migrating places where they feel safe at the moment maybe wow okay that's
that's fair enough could you just turn down your radio a little bit because it's it's getting a
little confusing there i got that one i actually had two radios on so what's on your mind well i guess
i've been listening for years and uh my son originally turned me on to you and i even uh i even get your
periodical oh okay the magazine yes cool yes it's the magazine indeed and uh so i'm calling
because nobody else is calling here and i hate being out there well it's uh here's the issue we
had one person calling who was tying up the phone line and other people couldn't get through and we
see that they're trying to get through but we can't get to them if they're the second call because of
the way google voice is set up so basically you're the one person i'm calling to say hello i don't
need to be on there and uh and the only thing i would you know i'm sitting here i was sitting here
reading uh one long night which is uh um which is scary pertinent to the moment but don't want to
bum everybody out well you know you wouldn't be the one bumming us out i think it's the news and and
current events started bumming us out so what we need now is just inspiration on how to get through
it who wrote that inspiration yeah who who wrote that piece that's andrea pittsger okay and andrea
pittsger yeah it's a global history of concentration camps so it's got pretty much the the run up to
today she doesn't have any chapters on us so i'll have to do a i'll have to do another edition
to fit america in in new concepts and concentration camp yeah you know it's uh it's a reality that i
see more people every day coming to terms with that wow we could actually go that route
yeah i think that so so if everybody's so nice like we're all really nice so it's just a matter of
getting out in the street and it's springtime so it's a it's a good time to do that and if everybody
finds places to go where everybody else is going to kind of show signs of uh of forcing it to not
be that way yeah i think it is i think you have something there it's uh often i think our kindness
and and uh is sometimes misinterpreted for um a lack of vigor or forcefulness no i think it's it's
demonized more than that my god it is really right it's like it's like our being like a feat or
something or being you know smarter than now or sometimes you know it's like it's you know i mean
the the to some people the concept of compassion just they don't get it they don't get it yeah you're
right true true they they they're they're sure that anybody who thinks that they're of any aid to
anybody else who is a faker and but it doesn't that doesn't make sense like not liking fakes i mean
because uh because uh trump is so uh i mean if he's opening his mouth he's lying i mean he even
when he says things that are true he has to put cap them with things that aren't true
like yeah yeah absolutely every time if he if he's talking he's making something up
he knows it's better to confuse people than to answer the question well you know i think the issue
is um uh you know not to focus on him so much other than you know what he has done and his the damage
he's causing but focus on us right and how we can be effective how we can be strengthened how we can
help each other and i think the way to do that is to is to um support each other you know even if
we're not people that generally agree on a lot of things if we agree on one thing that's enough to
work together to achieve something that um hopefully will will pull us out of this before it gets much
worse and it can get a lot worse i mean i'm seeing things now that i never thought i'd experience you
somebody somebody actually uh you know pulled out of this country thrown into a gulag somewhere
and uh you know the supreme court unanimously unanimously saying that uh he needs to come
back and and and the president basically giving the middle finger to the supreme court to the rule of
law you know what what is our plan for that we don't seem to have a plan and we better we better
start making a plan or it's going to get much much worse we do have congress doing trying to do maybe
trying to focus something besides the next election i'm not seeing congress doing much of anything and
and you have to remember also that the majority of congress is with him and um we have to also look
at ourselves because you know the american public made this happen so um you know the people around us
who are they what do they want do they did they want this and if they didn't i don't you know reach out
to them i don't believe i mean i'm much more and i've been watching this go on for a long time and i
and i'm in the camp that the that the uh the uh purging of voting roles and that kind of stuff
really had an effect on this last election never he would never have gotten near it and the people did
not choose him but the republicans have so muddied the world by doing but it's not exactly what they're
screaming about they're screaming about individuals
well you know the unfortunate i don't i don't believe it but i think it's we've let it happen so
that's true right john true that he's the president well the unfortunate reality is that um a lot of
people support what he does a lot of people back up what he does just look at his his cabinet look
at the people around him there was that um cabinet meeting last week you guys catch this but basically
they went around this huge table and every every uh um um cabinet member every secretary
had to say something to praise trump it was it was i mean every late night comic was having a field
day with this but boy that was scary because you know they're they're they're they're scared out of
their wits that they're going to say something that um uh won't land or that will offend him and i'm
not really sure what they're scared of uh being purged being uh out of a job you know it's not quite
like north korea where you wind up in you know before a firing squad but um to see people grovel like
that it's disgusting and i don't know anybody that wants to be like that i really don't so
we have to recognize it for what it is and um make sure that it goes away and never comes back
yeah yeah yeah yeah all right well listen it was great talking to you and and um i i hope uh to to
see woodstock again someday because it's it's it's really an awesome place yeah it's it's quite
it's quite fine in many ways indeed i've lived here a long time so i can imagine and do you know the
name of the radio station that 104.1 that carries us w-i-o-f w-i-o-f okay yes it's uh it's it's um
it's uh it's it's a low power broadcast but it's a legitimate uh licensed low power yeah
well that's pretty far that's great it's good to know that we're reaching people out there
so uh real people certainly all right well thanks for the call and we'll uh i'm sure we'll chat again
soon take care and if you look at w-i-o-f the call letters in the right way it kind of spells
104 i look being a one o being a zero and f the first letter of four see that's clever i could
swear i used to listen to a radio station with those call signs out of connecticut don't swear
i could swear i could swear all right another phone call you know maybe somebody from new york city we
do broadcast to new york city as well but woodstock boy uh everybody in woodstock is calling us that's
great that's wonderful it's the magic of radio and good evening you're on off the hook go ahead
hello yes go ahead where are you calling from can you uh yeah hi uh my name is frank i'm from
calling from uh woodbridge new jersey oh cool and uh i'm kind of a lighter note uh
all this uh uh stuff recently about ai uh using computers to write stories
and uh you know without any input from an actual writer uh when i first heard about this i remembered
a science fiction story i read back in the 60s called the silver egghead by fritz lieber and
in it uh they had these machines called word mills which were essentially computers and the writer would
just literally program uh that he wanted to write a story like say a mystery and the machine would
turn out one of these stories wow and but and it was uh written in what was called word woos
and this was you know like stream of thought uh words just like you know run together almost like uh
you know people using the uh internet lingo so so this story from the 1960s pretty much predicted chat gpt
uh something like that uh but the main emphasis of the story was that the writers revolted destroyed all
of the machines because they thought they were real writers turns out they didn't know how to write
actually write something and the country started falling apart because people couldn't get their word
woos and uh and uh and that the silver egghead came up later in the story and turns out these were
the brains of actual writers who were within these uh you know like little uh you know silver eggs
and they were able to you know start writing again but the whole idea was that uh writing was done by
uh computers uh or at that time uh you know i don't know if they uh you remember this is the 60s so uh i don't know
if they had the same ideas that they have today but essentially what it was is the machines were just
turning out stories and uh that's uh you know actual writing uh kind of fell by the wayside
that sounds fascinating and you know there's nothing better than going back and reading old
stories old novels that predict the future and some of them seem to get it right on you know so some of
the uh evils of technology you know you look around you and you say i saw that in the science fiction
story you you know what what black mirror is doing today in a you know a decade or two will probably be
reality so some of these stories are really on the mark some of them are way off but you know
they're all very uh illuminating in one way or another can you can you tell us the name of it again
uh the silver egghead is written by fritz lieber
okay who wrote you know a variety of type of stories he wrote uh horror and he uh wrote great
science fiction and he uh there was a uh movie came out uh also in the 60s called uh equinox
it was kind of a uh a h.p lovecraft type story and was based on a story that he wrote
so and he also wrote a story called a conjure wife which was made into a really good british uh horror movie
so he's fairly well known uh you know back in that time so i don't know if anybody knows about him today
alex did you have something
well yeah the um i i love this idea of of looking back at these things and i think i mentioned this on
on the air maybe a year or two ago but there was an isaac asimov short story that i often cite
whenever i'm asked to talk about ai on some ridiculous panel which seems to be like you know
every other month at this point but um this asimov short story was included in the in a compendium of
stories called nine tomorrows and i picked it up in istanbul i think in 1997 or 1998 for like seven
sensors i'm reading through this it was the one short story that stuck in my mind was uh was about
this guy who was picked up off the street in the future you don't know what's going on but there's
a war happening between machines and the outside and this this guy's picked up and he's put in
this colony with all these doers and thinkers and he's supposedly some amazing mathematician who's
come up with some mathematical principle that is going to catapult forward human intelligence such
that they're going to be able to stop these warring artificial intelligence machines that have been
combating each other for decades hundreds of years maybe even and you realize that this guy who's
looked upon as the savior at the end of the novel what he has discovered was actual uh multiplication
simple multiplication was this great mathematical revelation and that's when you realize that human
the human species has been so incredibly dumbed down by the use of technology and the reliance of
technology that they forgot how to do basic math and thought that something as simple as multiplication
was going to be able to to stop this massive war and allow them to predict the trajectories of missiles
and things and so i um i think that these cautionary tales about the implications of artificial intelligence
are really important for us to to understand because i do think that we will ultimately lose the ability
to organize our thoughts and to write well if we continually rely on these gpts for our thinking
for our the organization of our thoughts you know i i teach law at king's college in london and i know that
my students in preparation of their dissertation outlines and in the preparation of their dissertations
are very often using chat gpt and it's hard to detect it's hard to figure it out and i feel like
they're cheating themselves in doing this because you're they're they're not allowing themselves to
learn and to figure out how to organize their thoughts and to think about the issues themselves
so i i like to emphasize the the artificial part of artificial intelligence and i hope that one day
we'll look at artificial intelligence the same way that we look at artificial sweeteners as something
possibly to be avoided that's not the same as the real thing i mean i will take sugarcane over aspartame
any day and i hope that that we begin to look at human generated creative content the same way
well put well put uh caller thank you for giving us something to really think about
okay thank you all right take care we have time for one more call 802-321-4225 you know
i was um remembering a story that i read in school uh called the machine stops you guys ever hear about
this uh this story i just looked it up on wikipedia and um they describe it as um um set in the world
where humanity lives underground and relies on a great machine to provide its needs um it was written
by a science fiction writer e.m forster and the year 1909 yeah so uh that's a story worth reading
that's a story worth reading talk about predicting things you know this is shortly after the telephone
was invented and um it stuck with me all these years i'd like to like to read it again but there
are so many so many stories out there heinlein clark uh those are the well-known science fiction
writers but there are so many others throughout the ages yeah i had a conversation with a friend who's
a technician over the summer and they were talking about um the sense that they felt like they're
getting dumber and it's not really their fault and uh that sort of mental atrophy and that was it was
sort of a joke uh it was maybe exaggerated but in their work um diagnosing and stuff they use sort of
older test equipment and he talked about some of the other uh colleagues that were of other generations
that were sort of afraid of them because they had dials and switches and you know required a little bit
more uh careful uh setup and thought they would only use sort of things with tablets and and uh
an interface so i think those are the things you have to kind of share uh across uh time is what the
old way of doing things and and newer tools and everybody can continue learning okay we're going to
make this one a quick one good evening you're on off the hook go ahead
um hi i'd just like to invite everybody to a super nationwide tour going on right now and then to
um share some good news about it okay a nationwide what uh tour it's a speaking tour it's the second
one ever in existence about um stop top cities it's called the stop top city imaginary crimes
okay and that's a new york stop is at mayday space on sunday at 5 30 until 9 o'clock um and there's
this stop all over the country and um the positive news um about it that i wanted to share is that um
ohio uh there's a woman in ohio that's named emily cole who defeated her cop city in the budget stage
and then she became a city council person and there is a uh how to explain her video on how
everybody can do it like they did in two weeks with 30 people and one protest that video is called
um inside top city ohio project thank you so much for letting me share okay well thank you thank you for
for sharing that with us and uh that's that's going to just about do it for us uh tonight uh boy those
calls went fast but they were all good calls all really cool and uh revealing and all that um i want
to invite people to write to us here at off the hook oth at 2600.com i also want to invite people to
support wbai because without wbai we can't do any of this i'm sorry we can't pick up that phone call
because uh we're out of time i wish we had more time we should do this more often
um but please support wbai uh give um give to wbai.org or buddy.wbai.org those are ways that
you can support the radio station keep us strong keep the voices uh speaking one way or another
and um we'll we'll we won't let you down we'll talk about all the things that are going on in the
world of technology all the um uh the the rights that we know we have that we have to fight for
it's so very very important and um we all need to uh support each other keep in touch and educate
one another uh again oth at 2600.com is our email address we will be back next week with another
edition of off the hook and we'll be back for overtime next week as well at 8 p.m not this week
though uh this is a manual for alex and for kyle know your rights
this is a public service announcement with guitar
know your rights
all three of them i say
know your rights
know your rights
know your rights
know your rights
oh three of them
number one
you have the right to stay alive
murder is a crime
whoever does it
except
except police
man
oh
i'm so crap
just a billionaire
number two
you have the right
to fish
money
with a little compulsory
computer investigation
some ordinary human
humiliation
and
if you cross your fingers
rehabilitation
know these rights
these are your rights
right
the
that
is
the
You have the right to breathe speech as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it.
Now these are your rights. Study these rights. These are your rights. Know your rights. Know your rights. Know your rights.
Oh, Brianna.
Be warned. In most places, even these are thought to be expensive.
That's it. Go. Get off the street. Get off the street.
Get off the street. Don't you have a home to go to? Smash.
Smash.
Finally then, I will read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. And you are warned about anything you say.
Can and will be taken down and used to say anything against you.
Listen to this. Run!
Thank you.