Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central.
Speaker 1: It's America's only source for news. This is the Daily
Speaker 1: Show with your host show Start Hi Hi Money Right Show.
Speaker 1: We got one point tonight, unbelievable. I'll be speaking of
Speaker 1: the head of the FTC Lena Khan co on. It's
Speaker 1: going to be unbelievable.
Speaker 3: But first, as many if you were aware, the news
Speaker 3: has been pretty bleak recently the past two three hundred
Speaker 3: years listen, but this weekend there was one story that
Speaker 3: was so disturbing, so dark, even the news couldn't handle it.
Speaker 2: In our editorial discussions this morning, we were asked not
Speaker 2: to show the image from this video because of its
Speaker 2: violent and disturbing nature.
Speaker 3: Video which we are intentionally choosing not to show you.
Speaker 1: We're not going to show because of how disturbing it is.
Speaker 4: I was extremely disturbed to see.
Speaker 1: This horrible, horrible, violent imagery, violent and dehumanizing imagery. We're
Speaker 1: only going to show you a clip of this briefly.
Speaker 1: All right, that's enough, let's take it down. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to see it at all. It's got to be devastating.
Speaker 3: News Channel show images from Ukraine from Gaza from natural disasters.
Speaker 1: They get through them dispassionately.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine how devastating this footage must be. Former
Speaker 3: President Donald Trump shared a video this one on his
Speaker 3: truth social account, featuring an image of President Joe Biden
Speaker 3: hogtide on the back of a pickup truck. That's what
Speaker 3: was so disturbing and dehumanizing. You wouldn't show it on television.
Speaker 3: And an airbrushed Biden dcattle on the back of a truck.
Speaker 3: Are you the same networks that show reruns of nine
Speaker 3: to eleven every year?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it's great.
Speaker 3: That Trump is boasting things like this, but it's not
Speaker 3: like people really say Joe Biden was tied up in
Speaker 3: the back of the truck.
Speaker 2: It's a doctored image, but it's plastered on the tailgate
Speaker 2: of the pickup truck, so if you're driving behind it,
Speaker 2: it would appear as if Joe Biden were actually restrained
Speaker 2: on the vehicle's flatbed.
Speaker 3: If you think that's really Joe Biden tied up on
Speaker 3: the back of the pickup truck, I don't know that
Speaker 3: you have the mental acuity to be operating a motor vehicle,
Speaker 3: But if you do think that I should also probably
Speaker 3: explain to you that trucks also don't actually have testicles.
Speaker 1: It's just.
Speaker 3: A novelty item, and.
Speaker 1: It's not as low.
Speaker 3: It's not as low as an F one fifty and
Speaker 3: a Silverado love each other very much, they get one
Speaker 3: of these.
Speaker 1: It's not what is going on now.
Speaker 3: There is technology out there in the world that really
Speaker 3: does blur the line between reality and tailgate art, but
Speaker 3: those are mostly AI generated. Your fake Joe Biden robocall
Speaker 3: that tells New Hampshire voters not to vote your Chicago
Speaker 3: mayoral candidate, glorifying police brutality, your Donald Trump dropping by
Speaker 3: the neighborhood for a stupek look how comfortable he seems.
Speaker 3: And as AI gets better and better, it's only going
Speaker 3: to make it more difficult to separate fact from fiction,
Speaker 3: which could be terrifying. Luckily, the people in charge of
Speaker 3: AI have told us that just like with the Internet
Speaker 3: and social media actually going to make everything much.
Speaker 1: Much better, this has the potential to make life much better.
Speaker 1: I think it's honestly a lay up.
Speaker 5: I hate to sound like utopic techbro here, but the
Speaker 5: increase in quality of life that AI can deliver is extraordinary.
Speaker 5: AI is the most profound technology humanity is working on,
Speaker 5: more profound than fire or electricity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sucking fire, that's right, you are, and me.
Speaker 3: Your art me fire, I'm sorry, Ready to turn that up,
Speaker 3: suck a mother.
Speaker 1: Fire and hope? Whoa? What are you giggling at?
Speaker 3: Electricity? I mean, listen, I'm sure AI is good, but
Speaker 3: like fire good? How so they can help us solved
Speaker 3: very hard scientific problems that humans are not capable of
Speaker 3: solving themselves.
Speaker 6: Addressing climate change will not be particularly difficult for a
Speaker 6: system like that. The potential for AI to help scientists cure, prevent,
Speaker 6: and manage all diseases in this century.
Speaker 1: I completely trust you.
Speaker 3: And your enormously wide eyes and very human cadence. But
Speaker 3: benefit of a doubt this can cure diseases and solve
Speaker 3: climate change.
Speaker 1: What are we using it for now? Jarvis knows when
Speaker 1: to make me breakfast? Your toast is ready? All right?
Speaker 1: Are you out of your mind? See? Here's the thing
Speaker 1: toast I can make. I can make toast. It might
Speaker 1: be the only technology we have that works pretty much
Speaker 1: every time.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what, why don't you get to work
Speaker 3: on curing the diseases and the climate change and we'll.
Speaker 1: Hold down the fort on toast.
Speaker 3: Of course, now we have as a society. We have
Speaker 3: been through technological advances before and they all have promised
Speaker 3: the utopian life without drudgery.
Speaker 1: And the reality is they come for our jobs.
Speaker 3: So I want your assurance that AI isn't removing the
Speaker 3: human from the loop.
Speaker 1: This is not about replacing the human in the loop.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's about empowering the human. It's an assistant.
Speaker 1: It's an assistant. What we're all getting assistance. It's an assistant.
Speaker 3: AI works for unite and day tirelessly and all you
Speaker 3: had to do was remember their birthday.
Speaker 1: That's all you had to do. But I get it.
Speaker 1: It's an assistant.
Speaker 3: It's about productivity and that's good for all of us. Yes,
Speaker 3: although they do let the real truth slip out now.
Speaker 1: And again, they will be overall displacement in the labor market.
Speaker 1: You can get the same work done with fewer people.
Speaker 1: They're just the nature of productivity. That doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1: Same work done with fewer people. Not a math guy,
Speaker 1: but I think fewer means less.
Speaker 3: Yes, so AI can cure diseases and soft climate change,
Speaker 3: but that's not exactly what companies are going to be
Speaker 3: using it for?
Speaker 1: Are they?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: This is like productivity without the tax of more people,
Speaker 1: without the tax of more people?
Speaker 3: Are the people tax formerly referred to as employees? But
Speaker 3: you know, the promise of AI versus the reality of AI,
Speaker 3: it's not quite crystal clear mind yet how that's going
Speaker 3: to work out for workers. Do you have anyone who
Speaker 3: wants to lay this out more bluntly, perhaps while auditioning
Speaker 3: to be a bond villain from his mountaintop layer.
Speaker 6: Left completely to the market and to their own devices,
Speaker 6: These are fundamentally labor replacing tools.
Speaker 1: Did that guy just call us tools but he's actually
Speaker 1: warning us?
Speaker 3: Is there anyone who might say the same thing as
Speaker 3: this fella but looks at losing employees as a feature
Speaker 3: of AI and not a bug.
Speaker 2: The CEO of the company laid off ninety of its
Speaker 2: customer support staff AF. They're arguing that AI is kind
Speaker 2: of the reason. Why did you do this? It seemed
Speaker 2: a little brutal.
Speaker 1: It's smart. I think like Hitsbruden.
Speaker 2: If you think like a as a human.
Speaker 3: AI it's brutal if you think like as a human.
Speaker 3: It's not the catchiest ad slogan i've ever heard. So,
Speaker 3: while we wait for this thing to cure our diseases
Speaker 3: and self climate change, it's replacing us in the workforce.
Speaker 3: Not in the future, but now. So what exactly are
Speaker 3: we supposed to be doing for work?
Speaker 7: I think we'll need new types of jobs to help
Speaker 7: us embed AI and maintain AI in the workplace.
Speaker 1: Prompt engineers. They're basically people who learn how to use
Speaker 1: AI systems and in effect, how to program them. Who
Speaker 1: would have thought that there'll be a prompt engineer, right right?
Speaker 1: Prompt engineer?
Speaker 3: I think you mean types question guy. And by the way,
Speaker 3: if there's any job that can be usually replaced by AI,
Speaker 3: it's types question guy. This is some shit you got
Speaker 3: going here. AI models have hoovered up the entire sum
Speaker 3: of the human experience that we've accomplished over thousands of years,
Speaker 3: and now we just hand it off to be their
Speaker 3: prompt engineers. And by the way, you're not fooling anybody
Speaker 3: by adding a word engineer. You're not the types of
Speaker 3: question guy, You're the vice president of question input.
Speaker 1: This It's true. It's like a janitor is a doctor
Speaker 1: of mopping.
Speaker 3: Like this whole AI thing is a bait and switch
Speaker 3: you're acting like you're helping us. Oh Ai, it's supposed
Speaker 3: to be my assistant, but now I'm making AI and
Speaker 3: toast I'm Jarvis. Guess what, No, you'll listen to me.
Speaker 3: I got news for you, AI. I'm not Siri, you're Siri.
Speaker 1: Siri. While I have your attention, let me ask you
Speaker 1: a question.
Speaker 3: Sure, John, but first, could you run and fetch me
Speaker 3: some lynsium cadmium.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, that's not a problem.
Speaker 2: Mother.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to have to do this Ai, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear.
Speaker 3: With the technology this powerful, like nuclear power and atomic weapons,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to place a little call to my
Speaker 3: good pals in the United States government, perhaps even the
Speaker 3: House of Representatives are the Senate, and they're about to
Speaker 3: open up a can of what's AI?
Speaker 7: Now, do you understand what AI does?
Speaker 1: Understandings what's going on?
Speaker 2: Very frankly, it's new terrain and charted character. Do we
Speaker 2: have the knowledge set here to do it?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: The short answer is no. The long answer is hell no.
Speaker 3: And the longest answer is H to the E, to
Speaker 3: the L to the L or to the no.
Speaker 1: Hell. I don't even know how to use an answer.
Speaker 3: And we'll say to do to do.
Speaker 1: But I'm not against progress.
Speaker 3: But let's look to our history to see how we've
Speaker 3: dealt with previous economic disruptions.
Speaker 2: We can retrain workers from one generation and create jobs
Speaker 2: for the next.
Speaker 1: Retrained workers who do lose their jobs for even better
Speaker 1: jobs in the future, retrain in order to be productive workers.
Speaker 1: Upskill America to help workers of all ages of train
Speaker 1: and retrain workers for new jobs.
Speaker 8: Give me a break, body, you can throw coal into
Speaker 8: a furnace, can learn how to program, for God's.
Speaker 1: Sake, and I'll fight every one of you.
Speaker 3: Jack Coles who says different, But that's the game. Whether
Speaker 3: it's globalization or industrialization or now artificial intelligence, the way
Speaker 3: of life that you are accustomed to is no match
Speaker 3: for the promise of more profits and new markets. Which
Speaker 3: sounds brutal if you're a human, But at least those
Speaker 3: other disruptions took place over a century or decades. AI
Speaker 3: is going to be ready to take over by Thursday.
Speaker 3: And once that happens, what the is there left for
Speaker 3: the rest of us to do?
Speaker 1: Time is not a terrible thing.
Speaker 3: AI freeing us up to think about things at a
Speaker 3: higher level, it's gonna help.
Speaker 1: It's going to give us a I'm back. We'll be
Speaker 1: able to express ourselves in new creative ways. You know,
Speaker 1: he's right. I've been thinking about this all wrong.
Speaker 3: It's not joblessness, it's self actualizing me time.
Speaker 1: I'll live the artist's life. It'll give me.
Speaker 3: More time to explore my passions. You know, I'm an
Speaker 3: aging suburban dad. I'll learn to play the drums. You know, music,
Speaker 3: Ta ta tinky ta, music is what makes us human.
Speaker 3: When we come back, Lena conn will be joining your
Speaker 3: thums said, don't go away.
Speaker 1: My guest tonight learns one of the main government.
Speaker 3: Agencies responsible for enforcing anti trust and protecting consumers in America.
Speaker 3: Please welcome to the program, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lena Khan.
Speaker 1: It's lovely to see you. You run the Federal Trade Commission.
Speaker 3: That's right, the whole shebang, and you are in charge
Speaker 3: of it's it's protecting Americans from monopolistic uh government company practices,
Speaker 3: but also dealing with pricing and things like that, protecting consumers,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 7: I mean, the short of it is, we want to
Speaker 7: make sure that the American public is not getting bullied
Speaker 7: or coerced in the marketplaced or tricked and so we
Speaker 7: enforce the nation's anti trust and consumer protection laws.
Speaker 1: And how is well?
Speaker 3: Please, now, we just want to make killy that right.
Speaker 3: You were not bullied or tricked into applauding. Now, I
Speaker 3: don't want to be accused of monopolistic How much pressure
Speaker 3: do these companies exert on the Federal Trick com Mission?
Speaker 3: In other words, how much do they fight whatever regulation
Speaker 3: you're trying to put into place to keep them from
Speaker 3: becoming monopolies or from these types of business practices.
Speaker 7: Well, look, monopolies are not fans of enforcing the anti
Speaker 7: monopoly laws.
Speaker 5: And so that type of pushback is baked in. But
Speaker 5: we have a fantastic team.
Speaker 7: We're a small agency, but we're mighty, and we play
Speaker 7: to our strengths being entrepreneurial, being strategic, and getting real
Speaker 7: wins for the American people.
Speaker 3: What are the companies? So these are separate things monopolies.
Speaker 3: The way I always view it was, oh, that's only
Speaker 3: one company. But don't we have oligopolies in this country?
Speaker 1: Aren't there?
Speaker 3: Industries? Consolidation has made it. For instance, the entertainment industry
Speaker 3: is controlled by like six companies. Is that considered not
Speaker 3: a monopoly?
Speaker 1: But a problem.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Look, we've really focused on how are companies behaving?
Speaker 7: Are there behaving in ways that suggest they can harm
Speaker 7: their customers, harm their suppliers, harm their workers and get
Speaker 7: away with it. And that type of too big to
Speaker 7: care type approach is really what ends up signaling that
Speaker 7: a company has monopoly power because they can start mistreating
Speaker 7: you but they know you're stuck.
Speaker 3: And what would be the metrics of that? How would
Speaker 3: you judge that? Because I know you've sued Amazon, that's right,
Speaker 3: and that's for those practices.
Speaker 7: The last seat does allege that Amazon is a monopoly,
Speaker 7: that they've maintained that monopoly through illegal practices.
Speaker 5: And look, there are a variety of ways.
Speaker 7: That you can show a company is a monopoly and
Speaker 7: has monopoly power. One is you can try to figure
Speaker 7: out what's the exact boundary of the market, what's the
Speaker 7: market share? But again, the most direct way is to
Speaker 7: look at how is the company behaving. And as we
Speaker 7: lay out in our complaint, Amazon is now able to
Speaker 7: get away with harming its customers. So, just to give
Speaker 7: you a few examples, over the last few years, they've
Speaker 7: littered their search results page with junk ads, ads that
Speaker 7: internally executives realize are irrelevant and unhelpful to consumers, but
Speaker 7: they can just do it and it milks them, you know,
Speaker 7: billions of dollars in money. They've also been steadily hiking
Speaker 7: the fees that small businesses have to pay to sell
Speaker 7: through Amazon. And so now some small businesses have to
Speaker 7: pay one out of every two dollars to Amazon. It's
Speaker 7: basically a fifty percent monopoly tax.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: And so those are just some of the behaviors that
Speaker 7: we point to to note that this company has monopoly power.
Speaker 3: Is there anything in the company's leader that also suggests that, Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, if you were to go from being like
Speaker 3: sort of a nerdy dude who sold books out of
Speaker 3: a garage into let's say, a jacked lex luthor type,
Speaker 3: does that also suggest either monopolistic practices or some type
Speaker 3: of injections?
Speaker 7: You know, we haven't tried to make those arguments in court,
Speaker 7: but it would be interesting to see how a judge
Speaker 7: would respond, I.
Speaker 3: Think quite favorable. How many lawyers do you like? For instance,
Speaker 3: So what are you up against? So you've got government lawyers.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming you've got a pretty good cadre, But like
Speaker 3: let's say you're going after Amazon, how many lawyers.
Speaker 1: Are they in.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, if they have monopoly money, they
Speaker 7: can buy as many lawyers as they want. I mean,
Speaker 7: the FTC is around on twelve hundred employees. But when
Speaker 7: we're going up against some of these monopolistic companies, they
Speaker 7: can outmatch us, outgun us sometimes one to ten, just
Speaker 7: if you're looking at lawyers, if you're adding paralegals and.
Speaker 3: Support, if you're just looking at lawyers, they outnumber you
Speaker 3: ten to one.
Speaker 5: Sometimes they can.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, we have lawsuits against a whole bunch
Speaker 7: of big companies and just in terms of sheer resources
Speaker 7: that they can pour into the litigation, we're pretty outgunned,
Speaker 7: but not outmatched, right, And this is where it comes
Speaker 7: to playing to your strengths being entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1: So this isn't about just getting a fine.
Speaker 3: This isn't about going after Amazon and saying so because
Speaker 3: this is what the SEC does. The SEC, I think
Speaker 3: is overmatched as a government ager saying you don't.
Speaker 1: Have to comment out that, but just nod your head.
Speaker 3: Utterly overmatched, So they go after groups and then they
Speaker 3: can't really prove it in court. So then they're like,
Speaker 3: how about this. You give us a cut of your
Speaker 3: profit and we'll all be done here. How do you
Speaker 3: handle that with Amazon?
Speaker 1: It's not just about a fine, that's right.
Speaker 7: I think we've seen look over the last couple of decades,
Speaker 7: we've seen how businesses can treat fines just as a
Speaker 7: cost of doing business right, And we need to make
Speaker 7: sure that we're actually deterring illegal behavior, and so that
Speaker 7: can mean naming individual executives.
Speaker 1: We in our old snap you just did not go there.
Speaker 1: I like that. So have you had success with this?
Speaker 5: We have had success with this.
Speaker 7: I mean we had a lawsuit against Martin Screlly a
Speaker 7: couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: All suddenly it turned into a pro wrestling match. Here,
Speaker 3: let's go on, and he went to jail. Do you
Speaker 3: do you have to refer things to the DOJ or
Speaker 3: do you have an enforcement horn?
Speaker 7: So you're right, we don't have criminal authority. But the
Speaker 7: remedy we were able to get against Martin Screlly was
Speaker 7: to effectively ban him from doing business in the pharmaceutical industry.
Speaker 3: I imagine that the practice that he did in the
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical industry, which was taking a life saving drug and
Speaker 3: like Jack and the price.
Speaker 1: Up, I don't know how many thousands of percent. I mean,
Speaker 1: he did something crazy, right.
Speaker 3: How do you keep that as a normal practice in
Speaker 3: the pharmaceutical industry? I mean, are they colluding as a
Speaker 3: group to keep prices high? Why are we having so
Speaker 3: much trouble with them and prescription drug prices?
Speaker 7: I mean, look, there are a whole set of reasons why. Yep,
Speaker 7: for too many Americans, drugs are unaffordable, right. I mean
Speaker 7: I hear weekly monthly about American families who are having
Speaker 7: to ration life saving.
Speaker 1: Drugs absolutely and shortages of those drugs.
Speaker 7: Shortages of those drugs, and there can be all sort
Speaker 7: of tricks in monopolistic behavior that is leading to that.
Speaker 7: Just to give you one example, in Haler's. They've been
Speaker 7: around for decades, but they still cost hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 7: So our staff took a close look, and we've realized
Speaker 7: that some of the patents that had been listen did
Speaker 7: for these inhalers were improper, There were bogus, and so
Speaker 7: we sent hundreds of warning letters around these patents, and
Speaker 7: in the last few weeks we've seen companies delist these patents,
Speaker 7: and three out of the four major manufacturers have now
Speaker 7: said within a couple of months, they're going to cap
Speaker 7: how much Americans pay to just thirty five dollars.
Speaker 3: So this is their game life, So you being entrepreneurial
Speaker 3: is their game. We're going to see how far we
Speaker 3: can push this and get away with it and do
Speaker 3: these different things in the hopes that we don't run
Speaker 3: up against an entrepreneurial or crafty FTC.
Speaker 1: Are they waiting you out?
Speaker 5: Look, it's possible.
Speaker 7: But that's why you need to think about tactics that
Speaker 7: are going to be around deterrence.
Speaker 5: And so one big area of focus.
Speaker 7: For us is understanding what is the root cause of
Speaker 7: these problems? Right, Let's understand who is the mafia boss
Speaker 7: here rather than just going after.
Speaker 3: The foot soldiers, right, And I think you'd probably there's
Speaker 3: probably a biblical sin in there that's probably the root
Speaker 3: cause of the whole thing. But I want to talk
Speaker 3: about the tech companies because they are the new oligarchs.
Speaker 3: It would seem they are the companies that and you
Speaker 3: see this especially in Europe where they are fined considerable
Speaker 3: amounts of money for monopolistic practices or Apple just had
Speaker 3: to pay an enormous fine. Microsoft has always been found
Speaker 3: guilty of certain monopolistic practices when it comes along.
Speaker 1: How do you handle enforcement for.
Speaker 3: These new, incredibly consolidated and enormous oligarchies.
Speaker 7: So we have a lawsuit against Amazon, we have another
Speaker 7: ones against Facebook.
Speaker 1: What is the one against Facebook?
Speaker 7: So that one was filed before I arrived at the agency.
Speaker 7: But basically it alleges that Facebook, when it was watching
Speaker 7: the transition from desktop to mobile, it realized it really
Speaker 7: couldn't survive and mobile, and so it ended up and
Speaker 7: buying out Instagram and WhatsApp. And the lawsuit a ledges
Speaker 7: that those acquisitions were anti competitive, that they violated the
Speaker 7: anti trust laws, that instead of competing organically, Facebook instead
Speaker 7: bought its way to maintaining its monopoly.
Speaker 3: Now why why is that considered all of this? Wouldn't
Speaker 3: they say, well, that's a sign of our success. We're
Speaker 3: so successful, we have extra money, and with that extra money,
Speaker 3: we make bets on certain companies and we turn those
Speaker 3: into successes.
Speaker 7: So look, one key tenant of the anti monopoly laws
Speaker 7: is that you can't go out and buy one of
Speaker 7: your biggest competitors.
Speaker 1: Or you're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 5: You're not allowed to do that. In fact, can I.
Speaker 3: Tell you something crazy. So I had put in an
Speaker 3: offer for last week tonight I had come out.
Speaker 1: Now it wasn't I. I want to tell you so.
Speaker 3: Because it's Oliver I offered to him in the balloons.
Speaker 3: Is that what British people use? Obviously didn't take it.
Speaker 3: But you have to make the decision then of whether
Speaker 3: or not they are cornering the market. They used to
Speaker 3: call it cornering the market, but couldn't you say, like Apple, Microsoft,
Speaker 3: they are kind of working together to corner markets now.
Speaker 7: So look, we are investigating to understand whether some of
Speaker 7: the investments and partnerships that they're entering into right now
Speaker 7: in the AI space may in fact be giving them
Speaker 7: undue influence or giving them special privileges. If we get
Speaker 7: any hint that there is actual collusion happening in the marketplace,
Speaker 7: we take that extraordinarily seriously and won't hesitate to take action.
Speaker 7: One trend that we're especially concerned about is the way
Speaker 7: that algorithms may be facilitating price fixing. And so if
Speaker 7: you have a whole bunch of competitors in a market,
Speaker 7: be at hotels, be at casinos, and they all decide
Speaker 7: they're going to outsource their pricing, decision to the same algorithm,
Speaker 7: they may in effect be fixing their prices, even if
Speaker 7: they're not getting in the back room and making secret deal.
Speaker 3: If that would be like if a hotel says, oh,
Speaker 3: you can get us on Expedia, or you can get
Speaker 3: us on Kayak, or you can get us on but
Speaker 3: all those companies are using the same algorithm. Would that
Speaker 3: mean that it flattens those prices and you are not
Speaker 3: getting the competitive advantage that you might get from those
Speaker 3: ten to fifteen apps that are searching for the cheapest
Speaker 3: hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: Is that the idea that's right.
Speaker 7: You may collectively see inflated prices because all of these
Speaker 7: companies are using the same algorithm, they're inputting the same data,
Speaker 7: and that algorithm is an effect allowing them to collectively
Speaker 7: raise their prices.
Speaker 5: So Americans are having to pay more.
Speaker 1: And it's not just paying more.
Speaker 3: I mean you could look at a company like Walmart,
Speaker 3: where you would say, okay, they came in to areas
Speaker 3: and they dominated all the competition. They didn't buy up
Speaker 3: the mom and pop shops, but because they had access
Speaker 3: to cheap labor and overseas goods and those types of things,
Speaker 3: they could undersell them and put them all out of business.
Speaker 3: And even at that moment, they might not raise their prices,
Speaker 3: but boy could they and boy could they exert their
Speaker 3: influence on supply chains, And boy could they depress wages
Speaker 3: and make sure that people, even if they're working long hours.
Speaker 1: Still have to have social assistance. Is that something that
Speaker 1: you could go after?
Speaker 7: Look, monopolies harm Americans in a whole bunch of ways.
Speaker 7: You're absolutely right that it's not just higher prices. It
Speaker 7: can be lower wages. It can be suppliers getting muscled
Speaker 7: out of the market or seeing their own payments drop.
Speaker 7: It can also be shortages. I mean, we've seen over
Speaker 7: the last two years baby formula, baby formula.
Speaker 5: IV, bags adderall adderall.
Speaker 1: Basic forums.
Speaker 3: I see the audience says no use for baby formula,
Speaker 3: but has an interesting predilection.
Speaker 1: What do you do in that instance?
Speaker 7: So, look, we want to understand are there dominant players
Speaker 7: here that are using their muscle to coerce in ways
Speaker 7: that's contributing to shortages. We've also seen historically when you
Speaker 7: concentrate production, that concentrates risk, and so a single disaster,
Speaker 7: a single contamination, a single shock, can lead the entire
Speaker 7: supply to be wiped out.
Speaker 5: I mean, the short of it is, don't put all
Speaker 5: your eggs.
Speaker 3: In one basket, and then you guys are the ones
Speaker 3: that have to separate the eggs. It's curious to me
Speaker 3: that the government wouldn't have other methods of working with
Speaker 3: these corporations to ask them to curb their excesses in
Speaker 3: exchange for what they get, which is the stability of
Speaker 3: the American system.
Speaker 7: So look, we have a whole bunch of policies in
Speaker 7: laws in place that are actually designed to ensure our
Speaker 7: markets are more competitive and not as subject.
Speaker 1: To these withou actually innovation. That's the balance.
Speaker 7: But forty years ago, under President Reagan, we've radically veered
Speaker 7: off course and undertook a much more hands off approach,
Speaker 7: and now we're living with the consequences of those Disisis is.
Speaker 3: Industry more consolidated today? I mean, my gut would tell
Speaker 3: me it is more consolidated. You have larger companies that
Speaker 3: swallow up in the pursuit of growth, swallow up and consolidate.
Speaker 1: It feels that way to me. Do you have the
Speaker 1: metrics that suggest that that's actually the case on the whole?
Speaker 7: Yes, I mean, you always want to do a market
Speaker 7: by market analysis. But if you look at airlines, if
Speaker 7: you look at telecom, if you look at meat packers,
Speaker 7: if you look at huge parts of our economy across.
Speaker 5: The board, you've see in huge waves of.
Speaker 1: Mergers less competitive.
Speaker 7: Do you go from dozens of companies just to a
Speaker 7: very small number, And again that hurts Americans and American
Speaker 7: communities in all sorts of ways and even leads to,
Speaker 7: for example, planes falling apart in the sky.
Speaker 1: Wait, what.
Speaker 3: Irish thought that was just I always thought that was
Speaker 3: all just DEI are you telling me this gets us
Speaker 3: to our final point? So now they're saying this new algorithm,
Speaker 3: this new kind of machine learning model called AI, that's
Speaker 3: going to transform every aspect of American life, in the
Speaker 3: American economies. It's already being consolidated. Apple has bought thirty
Speaker 3: AI models. Microsoft is pride Bug, Google has bought They
Speaker 3: all buy AI startups and put them behind their paywell.
Speaker 3: And they're already having an arms race to see who
Speaker 3: will be either the monopoly or this will be in
Speaker 3: Ohla gobly.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you.
Speaker 3: I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple
Speaker 3: asked us not to do it. To have you, they
Speaker 3: you literally said, please don't talk to her, having nothing
Speaker 3: to do with what you do for a living.
Speaker 1: I think they just I didn't think they cared for you.
Speaker 1: It's what happened. They wouldn't.
Speaker 3: They didn't, They wouldn't let us do even that dumb
Speaker 3: thing we just did in the first Act on AI, Like,
Speaker 3: what is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to
Speaker 3: even have these conversations out in the public sphere.
Speaker 7: I think it just shows one of the dangers of
Speaker 7: what happens when you concentrate so much power and so
Speaker 7: much decision making in a small number of companies. I mean,
Speaker 7: going back all the way to the founding, there was
Speaker 7: a recognition that in the same way that you need
Speaker 7: the Constitution to create checks and balances in our political sphere,
Speaker 7: you also needed the anti trust and anti monopoly laws
Speaker 7: to safeguard against concentration and economic power, because you don't
Speaker 7: want an autocrat of trade in the same way that
Speaker 7: you don't want a monarch.
Speaker 3: But then it took the I mean it wasn't until
Speaker 3: the Sherman Act in what eighteen ninety some day. I mean,
Speaker 3: why when did they first decide was it the beginning
Speaker 3: of industrialization? When they finally decided like, oh, we should probably.
Speaker 1: Put a halt to this. That's right.
Speaker 7: You'd initially had some state level laws, but the first
Speaker 7: federal antitrust law was the eighteen ninety Sherman Act, and
Speaker 7: it was absolutely a response to the industrial evolution and
Speaker 7: a lot of the power that that had concentrated.
Speaker 3: Can we just hold on for one second? Why can
Speaker 3: you take the camera real quick? I want to take
Speaker 3: a single real quick if I can, I don't know
Speaker 3: which one. Let me take this one now. That Sherman
Speaker 3: thing didn't I oh, came out of nowhere. I think
Speaker 3: I might have learned that in like ninth grade?
Speaker 1: Stuck. Has that been updated since eighteen ninety So we.
Speaker 7: Had some follow on laws in nineteen fourteen, another follow
Speaker 7: on in theeen fifties, and then since then it's been.
Speaker 5: A bit more sparse.
Speaker 7: So for the most part, our lawsuits are still based
Speaker 7: on those laws going back a century.
Speaker 1: What would you posit?
Speaker 3: What would you put forth to control this new AI
Speaker 3: technology that is looming?
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about censorship.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about government deciding you can't say that
Speaker 3: or you can't print that. I'm talking about in terms
Speaker 3: of business practices these few companies controlling the entire mechanism.
Speaker 7: Look, the first thing we need to do is be
Speaker 7: clear eyed that there's no AI exemption from the laws
Speaker 7: on the books.
Speaker 5: We see sometimes.
Speaker 7: Business says try to dazzle enforcers by saying, oh, these
Speaker 7: technologies are so new, they're so different, let's just take.
Speaker 5: A hands off approach.
Speaker 7: And that's basically what ended up happening with Web two
Speaker 7: point oh. And now we're reeling from the consequences, and.
Speaker 1: So we need to make sure all of the Web
Speaker 1: two point oh is.
Speaker 7: You know, the rise of social media, and you know,
Speaker 7: in the early two thousands, the initial set of of
Speaker 7: companies that ended up innovating but ultimately becoming monopolistic, ultimately
Speaker 7: adopting business models that are premised on endlessly surveilling.
Speaker 3: People and so and hoovering up data and creating algorithms
Speaker 3: that are clearly harmful not just to children, but to
Speaker 3: political discourse.
Speaker 1: And there's it's it's pretty wild how they're able to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: And they every now and again they get called in
Speaker 3: front of Congress and Mark Zuckerberg, you know, do I
Speaker 3: goes like.
Speaker 1: Like and subscribe? You know, I don't know, but it
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 3: Are you optimistic that we will be able to catch
Speaker 3: up to this in time before something truly catastrophic happens
Speaker 3: through AI.
Speaker 7: Well, look, there's no inevitable outcome here. We are the
Speaker 7: decision makers and so we need to use the policy
Speaker 7: tools and levers that we have to make sure that
Speaker 7: these technologies are proceeding on a trajectory that benefit Americains
Speaker 7: and we're not subjected to all of the risks and harms.
Speaker 1: Right, boy, would you stay forever because it's incredible pros
Speaker 1: the way you got do me so much FDC chair
Speaker 1: lea PM. Where are you to talk about what they do?
Speaker 3: That?
Speaker 1: To go chelping tonight?
Speaker 3: But before we go, we're gonna check in with your
Speaker 3: host for the rest of this week, Daisy Lighting, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be doing heavy.
Speaker 1: What are you excited about this week?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't mean to brag, John, but I've got
Speaker 4: a perfect NCAA bracket Women's and men's.
Speaker 1: Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. It's incredible. How's that even possible?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, here's the key strategy that I've honed over many seasons. See,
Speaker 4: I fill out the bracket after the games are played.
Speaker 5: That way, I know who wins.
Speaker 1: And what will you be doing on the show this week?
Speaker 4: Well, John, I mean that's impossible to say until after
Speaker 4: the shows have happened. See it's a strategy that works
Speaker 4: across the board.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to watch Daisy Light. Everybody, God bless
Speaker 1: you all.
Speaker 6: Enjoy the day.
Speaker 8: And I'm coming down to do that Easter egg role
Speaker 8: just a minute. Thank you all, Oh very very much.
Speaker 8: Thanks everybody. And by the way, say hello to oyster bunnies.
Speaker 8: Come on up bunnies, get up here as they can
Speaker 8: see you. Come on, get in here, pretty big bunny.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 8: Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
Speaker 8: searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Watch The Daily Show weeknights at eleven.
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Speaker 1: This has been a Comedy Central podcast