Speaker 1: You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty I AM six forty bill handle here Monday morning,
Speaker 1: October twenty seven, just being announced that the US and
Speaker 1: China have come to an agreement. Looks like the one
Speaker 1: hundred percent tariff increase in China that was supposed to
Speaker 1: start November one is off the table. China is going
Speaker 1: to resume buying soybeans from the United States. The rare
Speaker 1: earth minerals that China has said is going to stop
Speaker 1: sending the United States, that is resuming. So it looks
Speaker 1: like they're coming to some kind of an agreement China
Speaker 1: in the US. So that's good news on that side
Speaker 1: for sure. Where the president is in it's in Japan,
Speaker 1: I think right now, and he's going to be meet
Speaker 1: with Xang Xing Ping g Jing Penn Ping pings around.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, President j Ping, the old Pinster, that's what
Speaker 1: they call him, the the ping Master, that's what they
Speaker 1: call him. Hey, the pinkster doing Yeah, yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: ping Moister. Yes, that's what he's known in China with
Speaker 1: for all right, God damn, I'm good. All right, it's flowing.
Speaker 1: People go, how do you keep a job. I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I agree with you completely. Okay. I got
Speaker 1: some emails. I received some emails regarding the demolition of
Speaker 1: the East Wing because, as I said last week, man,
Speaker 1: it's heartbreaking, you know, I look at the White House
Speaker 1: and it's being completely changed the profile of the White
Speaker 1: House instead of what I thought, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people did this symmetrical building that we know of. What
Speaker 1: the President did is take out the east wing completely.
Speaker 1: He originally said the East Wing was not going to
Speaker 1: be touched at all. It was going to be this
Speaker 1: ballroom adjacent to but not actually touching the East Wing.
Speaker 1: And the next thing we know, it's demolished without telling us,
Speaker 1: without saying anything, it's just, hey, I'm demolishing it. And
Speaker 1: so as I was complaining about it, because I do
Speaker 1: think it's our iconic building, the President's house, that sort
Speaker 1: of my opinion arbitrarily taken down. Of course, I got emails.
Speaker 1: So look what Truman did, Look what Obama did, Look
Speaker 1: what Teddy Roosevelt did, all of which is true. But
Speaker 1: I thought i'd go back with a little bit of
Speaker 1: history going starting in nineteen to Teddy Roosevelt remade the
Speaker 1: White House and it was additions to when they started.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how many years back, the White
Speaker 1: House was just the White House itself, without the East
Speaker 1: or the West wing, and then prior to nineteen oh two,
Speaker 1: presidents would work from different spaces. The Oval Office didn't exist.
Speaker 1: There was no designated spot, and Roosevelt wanted a central office,
Speaker 1: so he built the first presidential office right there, and
Speaker 1: the West Wing came into existence. In nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: President Franklin Roosevelt added twenty five thousand feet of permanent
Speaker 1: office space to the West Wing, and there was a
Speaker 1: penthouse story. A second story was put on, and there
Speaker 1: was a subterranean office also put on, and the Oval
Speaker 1: Office was relocated to the West Wing where we now
Speaker 1: know that it is now a couple of big ones.
Speaker 1: And this is where I was written to look what
Speaker 1: Truman did. Truman reconstructed the White House. Well, he did
Speaker 1: because the White House was falling apart. The inspectors that
Speaker 1: came in, the folks that looked at the very construction
Speaker 1: of that White House of the White House, the supports
Speaker 1: were saying, this thing was falling apart. They had no
Speaker 1: idea how it was even standing. The Trumans were in
Speaker 1: the residents and the floor above that, the piano came through,
Speaker 1: the piano leg came through the ceiling, and they gutted
Speaker 1: the White House, not changing the view of the White House,
Speaker 1: just refurbishing the whole White House. So whatever changes were
Speaker 1: put in, by the way, it all went through the
Speaker 1: various committees, the National Historic White House Association, asking Congress.
Speaker 1: I mean, they went through a long, long period of
Speaker 1: basically looking at it. You know, there were commissions that
Speaker 1: were involved. Truman was very very careful about doing this.
Speaker 1: There was nothing fast about. And then Obama that's the
Speaker 1: big one. Well, Obama's been three hundre million dollars on
Speaker 1: refurbishing or what he did to the White House. Look
Speaker 1: at the White House before and after Obama and tell
Speaker 1: me what the changes are. It was all structural changes.
Speaker 1: It was refitting the pipe, it was new electrical, it
Speaker 1: was new alarm systems. That's where the money was spent. Well,
Speaker 1: oh wait a gonut it Okay. So the tennis court,
Speaker 1: he added a basketball court, he put up some baskets
Speaker 1: at the end, did not change the look of it.
Speaker 1: So as you say, look at what Obama did, look
Speaker 1: at what Truman did versus look at what's happening now.
Speaker 1: The White House will not look the same. Ever, again,
Speaker 1: what we know is the White House has been changed completely.
Speaker 1: We now have a building with the East Wing of
Speaker 1: the White House is now bigger than the White House itself,
Speaker 1: all because arbitrary the President wakes up and he goes,
Speaker 1: this is what I want. This is what we're going
Speaker 1: to do. And I tell you have lived through looking
Speaker 1: at the White House as our iconic building, is probably
Speaker 1: the most famous building in the world. And now it's
Speaker 1: going to be that big, beautiful white what ballroom that'll
Speaker 1: fit nine hundred people. By the way, that's not to
Speaker 1: say that there wasn't an issue, because the biggest state
Speaker 1: room in the White House itself holds two hundred people,
Speaker 1: and to have a state dinner with only two hundred people,
Speaker 1: that's a low number. To have a state dinner with
Speaker 1: almost one thousand people, that probably makes more sense. But
Speaker 1: could have been built in another place, could have been
Speaker 1: built that it have to be built right next to
Speaker 1: the East Wing, which completely destroyed the look of the
Speaker 1: White House as we know it. And of course Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson when asked about it, he said, it's going to
Speaker 1: be glorious. That's the word he used, glorious. And as
Speaker 1: I said earlier this morning when I opened the show,
Speaker 1: if Donald Trump took a dump on the lawn of
Speaker 1: the White House, that would be glorious, just glorious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a heartbreaker. It is for me, It really is.
Speaker 1: It is. I mean, I grew up with a White
Speaker 1: House looking the way it is my entire life. And
Speaker 1: maybe there's certain things that I just don't want to change.
Speaker 1: I'm old school and I'm fine with change. By the way,
Speaker 1: I have no problem with change on this one, not
Speaker 1: so much, okay. Now, the world's most popular chat box
Speaker 1: chat GPD Jack cheap Chat GPT just launched a web
Speaker 1: browser this week and it promises to make surfing the
Speaker 1: Internet smarter. And it's called Atlas, and at once permission
Speaker 1: to watch and remember everything you do online. It outsurveils
Speaker 1: Google's Chrome. By the way, that's saying a lot. It
Speaker 1: doesn't just log which websites you visit. Here's where it
Speaker 1: goes beyond that. It's the word memories of what you
Speaker 1: look at and what you do on those sites. It
Speaker 1: actually can grab control of your mouse and browse for you.
Speaker 1: I mean, God forbid. All right, Now, there is a
Speaker 1: huge amount at steak when which browser you choose because
Speaker 1: it's your daily portal to the Internet, and who doesn't
Speaker 1: use the Internet and a spigotive information companies can use
Speaker 1: to target you with ads, steer you towards certain sites,
Speaker 1: and train AI on your behaviors and interests. So it
Speaker 1: actually gets to know you better than you know you
Speaker 1: and its minority report is what this is. There's the
Speaker 1: search engineer Perplexity makes a browser called Comment. Google has
Speaker 1: Gemini added Gemini bought to Chrome, and it also adds
Speaker 1: capabilities that lets AI do tasks for you. What does
Speaker 1: that actually do well? It replaces Google with chat gp
Speaker 1: is the main source to find websites and information and
Speaker 1: I use I don't even know what I use Safari
Speaker 1: and I don't know who owns Safari and what goes? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I use. But here's it. For instance, you
Speaker 1: asked it to summarize an article or analyze data. Okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. And it puts chat GPT one click
Speaker 1: away for for example, revising email drafts. Okay, that makes
Speaker 1: it easier because chat GPT just makes work much easier. Now,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, it's also working to learn about you,
Speaker 1: not about making a speech better or rewriting a resume. Nope.
Speaker 1: If you grant permission during setup, and that's easy to do,
Speaker 1: it builds a trove of memories about the sites you
Speaker 1: visit and surfaces them when you need them. It's just
Speaker 1: a very very sophisticated way of knowing who we are
Speaker 1: and who you are. I go to Costco and they
Speaker 1: know I buy frozen burritos. Okay, Now it knows when
Speaker 1: I really need them, what my feelings are about burritos.
Speaker 1: It knows what my life is visa VI burritos. I
Speaker 1: think we all kind of do. Yeah, I know, well,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty open about it. But there are things that
Speaker 1: are not optically open about, for example, opening up a
Speaker 1: website talking about the pimples on my scroat. All right,
Speaker 1: it's not something I want to share with everybody. But
Speaker 1: if I just even open that asking the question, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it knows what I'm interested in. It
Speaker 1: knows I have a problem and it's going to throw me.
Speaker 1: Here's some scrote pimple cream. Now I have someone here
Speaker 1: who is just groaning. Lindsey's in the room.
Speaker 2: She's not the only one growing one, and my vote,
Speaker 2: it's probably an ingrown hair.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you, thank you for that. And by
Speaker 1: the way, they'll the chat GPT will know that it's
Speaker 1: your view of it. So it remembers not just the
Speaker 1: website addresses, but facts and insights from the sites themselves
Speaker 1: based on summaries of the content that open AI makes.
Speaker 1: Bottom line is it's diving much much deeper into what
Speaker 1: you are thinking, what you are visiting, and gets an
Speaker 1: impression not just specifically as to that site, knowing that
Speaker 1: I'm looking for frozen burritos, but actually figures out why
Speaker 1: I'm looking for frozen burritos. Now, obviously that is a
Speaker 1: horrible analogy because I can't go beyond making horrible analogies.
Speaker 1: But I'm imagine where this is going. It is Minority Report.
Speaker 1: It really is that film where they know before you
Speaker 1: think it, what you're going to think about. Now, is
Speaker 1: it going to go that far? Probably not, But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you, these programs are going to know which way
Speaker 1: you're leaning, what you might be doing, what you will
Speaker 1: never do. That's pretty frightening stuff to say the least.
Speaker 1: You know, it remembers everything you looked at it also
Speaker 1: remembers things you don't want it to look at, relationship
Speaker 1: troubles or a medical condition that you were just looking
Speaker 1: at at two am in the morning. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're frightened of that of the com Usually
Speaker 1: I'm not frightened of technology. I'm really not. I'm fine
Speaker 1: with license plate readers, and I'm fine with cameras in
Speaker 1: open places, helicopters, drones out there with cameras in public.
Speaker 1: But man, this one goes a little bit further than
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with. All right, now, AI, we've heard a
Speaker 1: lot about AI. We live with AI. We're looking at
Speaker 1: a future with AI. And you may not be hired though,
Speaker 1: or you may be fired, or you may be asked
Speaker 1: to do a whole lot more work or maybe not,
Speaker 1: depending on how AI is utilized by your company. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out the companies are increasingly aiming to maintain
Speaker 1: or reduce workforce size, anticipating that AI is going to
Speaker 1: automate tasks it will boost productivity. Should for example, let
Speaker 1: me give you an example, into its revenue row sixteen
Speaker 1: percent in the last fiscal year, no additional employees, sixteen
Speaker 1: percent up. You think a lot more employees not a chance,
Speaker 1: and they're thinking staffing and not replacing departing employees attrition,
Speaker 1: and we've seen that happen here at iHeart. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if iHeart uses AI at all. I do
Speaker 1: know that a lot of people are gone and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are not being hired. And I don't
Speaker 1: know how much AI is part of it. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: because iHeart just hates people, even though we're in the
Speaker 1: people business. You know. I've got to ask management about that,
Speaker 1: but they won't talk to me because they said they
Speaker 1: hate me. Some companies are cutting jobs target eight percent
Speaker 1: they've cut using AI. And here is the gamble. It's
Speaker 1: a corporate gamble. Can you run a company? Can you
Speaker 1: increase sales? Can you juice profits without adding people? And
Speaker 1: companies are making that calculation, saying, let's see if we
Speaker 1: can keep the size of our employees flat or not
Speaker 1: the size of the employees wait wise, but the number
Speaker 1: of employees flat. I want to make sure you get that,
Speaker 1: or maybe even shrink through layoffs without harming the business.
Speaker 1: And seems to me one of the things about the
Speaker 1: philosophy the last few years is more for fewer people.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've noticed. But every time and
Speaker 1: here it's all over the place. They let someone go
Speaker 1: and do not replace that someone, simply asking the existing
Speaker 1: someone's to take up the slack, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there's more to do and you're asked to do more,
Speaker 1: perform better for the same money. Usually part of the
Speaker 1: thinking is that AI can be used to pick up
Speaker 1: some of the slack, maybe automate more processes, and companies
Speaker 1: are hesitant because are we going to hire people? Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know what's happening with the economy, we don't
Speaker 1: know what's happening with the administration and which way it's
Speaker 1: going to go. JP Morgan Chase chief financial officers said,
Speaker 1: the bank at this moment has a very strong bias
Speaker 1: against having the response to hire more people. They just
Speaker 1: don't want to do it. Golden Sachs send a memo
Speaker 1: to staffers that the firm will I love this constrain
Speaker 1: headcount growth through the end of the year. That means
Speaker 1: no more people are going to be hired and it's
Speaker 1: going to reduce the role that AI is going to
Speaker 1: be able to function in. Walmart plans on keeping the
Speaker 1: head count roughly flat over the next three years. Now,
Speaker 1: even with just inflation in terms of growth, that's ten percent,
Speaker 1: and no new people are going to be hired. So
Speaker 1: there is this new model, ultra lean model of staffing.
Speaker 1: More roles are kept unfilled and hiring is now as
Speaker 1: a last resort. Used to be as business came in,
Speaker 1: you'd hire more people. It was real easy. I have
Speaker 1: friends of mine who have law firms, and as more
Speaker 1: business comes in, of course they hire more lawyers. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at it, first year second year lawyers
Speaker 1: really aren't needed that much. First and second year lawyers
Speaker 1: do research, they produce memos, they create well, they do
Speaker 1: deposition questions, they do interrogatories, these questions asked the other side.
Speaker 1: An AI probe can do that and can do it
Speaker 1: great into it is not replacing roles in its finance,
Speaker 1: legal and customer support functions. So the last year revenues
Speaker 1: rose sixteen percent into it the head count stayed flat.
Speaker 1: So you can see why so many hundreds of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars are being invested in AI. The problem with
Speaker 1: AI is so much money is going into AI, so
Speaker 1: much astronomical amounts of money, is it ever going to
Speaker 1: pay for itself? A lot of insiders are saying, uh huh.
Speaker 1: Also in these large companies, HR chiefs are saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it is becoming difficult to even predict how many employees
Speaker 1: we're going to need because of how quickly technology is
Speaker 1: taking off, and it goes even more than that. Some
Speaker 1: employers say, think that fewer employees will actually improve operations. Now,
Speaker 1: think about that. One you work at a company and
Speaker 1: X number of dollars are produced or whatever products are produced,
Speaker 1: they lay off ten percent and more is being done.
Speaker 1: That's way beyond someone quits, someone gets fired. Hey you
Speaker 1: over there, are you going to do the work. This
Speaker 1: is someone quits, someone gets fired, and hey you over there,
Speaker 1: you're going to do the work. Oh no, no, you're
Speaker 1: going to get fired too. We're going to fire everybody now.
Speaker 1: Right now, layoffs have not become widespread, but some companies
Speaker 1: are making cuts. Just last Thursday, Target said it's cutting
Speaker 1: about one thousand corporate employees and another eight hundred that
Speaker 1: are open are no longer going to be open. AI.
Speaker 1: We don't know which way it's going, and have we
Speaker 1: figured out yet how AI is going to do our segments.
Speaker 1: We did it once, and we want to know if
Speaker 1: it's any better. Yeah, we're still working on that. The
Speaker 1: person who's helping us out is no longer with us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah here, yeah, because AI has replaced the person
Speaker 1: who was doing that, So now we need AI to
Speaker 1: replace the person who was working with AI to do that.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have said it any better. Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: Thank you very very much. Okay, Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're a big fan of haunted houses. I am not.
Speaker 1: I do well. First of all, I don't watch horror movies.
Speaker 1: Let's start with that, because I can't sleep for three
Speaker 1: weeks after a horror movie. I'm a real pantyways when
Speaker 1: it comes to that. Also, I don't go to those
Speaker 1: haunted houses at the various theme parks and the ones
Speaker 1: that are put up because they're they're pretty impressive. Now,
Speaker 1: Neil creates haunted houses, and you did one for you
Speaker 1: helped the school MAXI School right create times.
Speaker 2: This year I was an ancillary player doing some props
Speaker 2: and some animatronics and stuff, some video projection things, and
Speaker 2: but last year I I headed it up with a
Speaker 2: team and I love doing it.
Speaker 1: I don't think. Let me ask you how to gore
Speaker 1: per se. Yeah, let me ask you this. You put
Speaker 1: you put you put an eight year old kid through
Speaker 1: a haunted house where the monsters come out and Jason
Speaker 1: comes out and arms that are decapitated, you know, heads
Speaker 1: are flying around. How does that kid not stay in
Speaker 1: therapy for the next thirty years? Explain that one to me.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't do those kinds of things. But there's
Speaker 2: some people that have different responses. The the fear response
Speaker 2: is similar to like a thrill response of a roller
Speaker 2: coaster or something like that. And some people really love
Speaker 2: you know, having their you know, their heart rate jump up.
Speaker 2: And there was a recently Bill I just saw an
Speaker 2: a I think it was in some magazine or something,
Speaker 2: did a breakdown of the scariest movies the scientists actually
Speaker 2: put you know, did a study to see how people's
Speaker 2: body reacted to certain movies.
Speaker 1: They just some people love it. Yeah, I can't. I
Speaker 1: don't understand that I'm scared so much. But in any case, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can rent the Poltergeist house in Simi Valley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: came in yep. Uh, And uh it's an airbnb. And
Speaker 1: there are other homes out there around the country. Some
Speaker 1: have been around forever, some have just opened up. Uh,
Speaker 1: as the rentals Airbnb. Uh, Salem, Massachusetts is the fastest
Speaker 1: rising Halloween destination on this platform platform being do you
Speaker 1: want to rent? Do you want to go to Airbnb
Speaker 1: and rent a haunted house? Now, there is one place
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you if you know this and
Speaker 1: I read this because I don't look into this as
Speaker 1: far as I'm going to go there. Uh, there is
Speaker 1: one city that remains the undisputed top of the list
Speaker 1: when it comes to haunted places and haunted houses. Where
Speaker 1: do you think that would be? Do do do do? Do? Do?
Speaker 1: Do do doo? Dude, I don't know. Okay, New Orleans? Oh,
Speaker 1: New Orleans, Yeah, that makes sense. They have so many
Speaker 1: of these houses on the West coast. Which city do
Speaker 1: you think this is a fun one on the West coast?
Speaker 1: Which city has the highest number of haunted hot haunted houses?
Speaker 1: Haunted hounse anyway, I don't know what that phrase is,
Speaker 1: but which city do you think is number one on
Speaker 1: the West coast in terms of haunted homes? I don't
Speaker 1: know what Cono kono that is correct? Con O no Bernardino, Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: they do. It's exactly correct. It is a huge Halloween draw.
Speaker 1: Go figure that one out. It's which I have to
Speaker 1: look at the one in well, we know the Siami
Speaker 1: Valley one, but there's one here that I want to
Speaker 1: look ab at San Bernardino. I'm all over the place.
Speaker 1: Saint Helen's, Oregon, Fayetteville, Fullerton has one. Fullerton has one.
Speaker 1: And these are people who Now people go to these things,
Speaker 1: which I never would because I would be scared to death.
Speaker 1: It's not so much seeing a ghost or a Pultzergeist
Speaker 1: or Casper. It's the knocks on the door. It's all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the room gets cold and there's a
Speaker 1: draft going through it. You hear giggling off in the background, and.
Speaker 2: Hearing children would freak me out, or a faint woman's voice.
Speaker 2: But knocking on a door and getting chilly, come on.
Speaker 2: I've spent the night in at least two places that
Speaker 2: are reported to be haunted. The Magic Castle, I spent
Speaker 2: the night in once during the Tim O'Neil show, I think.
Speaker 1: And then I spent the night.
Speaker 2: In the haunted cabin at the Queen Mary.
Speaker 1: Oh you stayed in that one in.
Speaker 2: That room, yeah, yeah, And there was a the bed
Speaker 2: looked like someone sat on it, like well, we were
Speaker 2: talking out of the court of my eye.
Speaker 1: It looked like someone sat on it.
Speaker 2: But I don't believe in in ghosts in that sense.
Speaker 1: I stayed at in the Queen Mary once, not in
Speaker 1: the haunted house, but in the hotel itself, and I
Speaker 1: watched play there a couple of times. Yeah, KFI connected
Speaker 1: to some kind of a magic show there, a weird,
Speaker 1: weird magic show that went on, and the place already
Speaker 1: closed down. And going through the halls of the Queen Mary,
Speaker 1: oh Man, past the rooms by yourself eleven o'clock at night. Boy,
Speaker 1: that was not a pleasant experience. Oh I love the
Speaker 1: Queen God, it was horrible. All right, we are done.
Speaker 1: This is KFI AM six forty. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: the Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app.