Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, our show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver. Today on the show will be
Speaker 2: giving you a degenerate gambler's guide to the election, including
Speaker 2: a big proposed election bet which has not been reciprocated yet.
Speaker 1: After that, we're going to talk about the threat of
Speaker 1: pots and automation to one of the things that Nate
Speaker 1: and I hold dear to our hearts, poker and online
Speaker 1: poker specifically, and then.
Speaker 2: We'll re evaluate p doom, the probability of severe misalignment
Speaker 2: from artificial intelligence in light of recent news at Open AI.
Speaker 2: This is a good episode, Maria. I feel like we
Speaker 2: were kind of hitting all the basic angles today.
Speaker 1: I feel like we are too, so so let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's get it started. Nate, I couldn't help but notice
Speaker 1: a recent exchange on Twitter that you that you engaged in,
Speaker 1: As so often happens, your views on Twitter were challenged.
Speaker 1: I know this is this comes as a shock to
Speaker 1: everyone every time I hear it. You know, people don't
Speaker 1: always agree with you, and this particular challenge was about
Speaker 1: Florida right and about the likelihood what percentage by what
Speaker 1: percent Trump was going to carry Florida. So do you
Speaker 1: want to do you want to talk us through a
Speaker 1: little bit what happened and why we're why we're starting
Speaker 1: our show with this particular Twitter exchange.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we published an article at Silver Bulletin late
Speaker 2: last week pointing out that that Florida's kind of close
Speaker 2: in the polls, Harris is down by about three and
Speaker 2: a half points, similar to Trump's margin of victory in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and that maybe the Harris campaign, you have
Speaker 2: infinite money, it's worth actually investing in the Sunshine State.
Speaker 2: The American investor Keith Erboy, He's like, you're an idiot.
Speaker 2: Trump's gonna win Florida by This is not the literal
Speaker 2: verbatim version, right, You're an idiot. Trump's gonna win Florida
Speaker 2: by at least eight points, if not ten or twelve.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, okay, bro, how much are you willing to, like,
Speaker 2: actually wager on this? And he says one hundred K,
Speaker 2: which seems like a seemed like a good amount to me. Right,
Speaker 2: it's a serious it's a serious adult bet. And by
Speaker 2: the way, there's a chance that Trump will win Florida
Speaker 2: by eight points or more if you look at polymarket,
Speaker 2: about twenty five percent. But I'm willing to take one
Speaker 2: hundred k bet where I win seventy factions of the time.
Speaker 2: And so I said, okay, you got to send me
Speaker 2: a contract though, because you've been sketchy lately, and I
Speaker 2: don't really you know, he's not like a known I mean, ironically,
Speaker 2: like known gamblers are like more reliable for payout stuff, right,
Speaker 2: But I don't want him saying like, oh, the election
Speaker 2: was stolen. I don't want him saying, oh haha, I
Speaker 2: was just joking. So need some type of third party
Speaker 2: to step in and create a contract or at least
Speaker 2: create an obligation expectation. So far that has not happened.
Speaker 2: We had a little bit of negotiations by back channel email.
Speaker 2: The mutual friend said I'm willing to do this and
Speaker 2: then and mister Riboy has not replied yet, so I'm
Speaker 2: not sure kind of how much more time I want
Speaker 2: to give my I don't like giving people free options, right.
Speaker 2: You know, if there's a poll that comes out this
Speaker 2: week showing Trump way up in Florida, then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, his bet becomes not plus TV but better,
Speaker 2: but Yeah, So anyway, I think this is an honorable
Speaker 2: way to resolve differences, right that if you actually have
Speaker 2: to pay a tax for your bullshit on Twitter, right,
Speaker 2: seventy five percent chance of losing one hundred K, then
Speaker 2: that to me seems like you know, I think the
Speaker 2: world will be better off if people spent more time
Speaker 2: betting and less time trolling on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think that there should be a bullshit tax,
Speaker 1: for sure. And just so that the the audience is
Speaker 1: up to date, this is not the first time you've
Speaker 1: been challenged. To date, not a single person has actually
Speaker 1: taken you up on your Nobody ever, actually, nobody has
Speaker 1: goes through Yeah, nobody has Heath ever done.
Speaker 2: To a further step than most people do, right, So
Speaker 2: give them credit for that. But like, but yeah, they
Speaker 2: almost always back down because if I'm making a bet,
Speaker 2: they're typically carefully. I'm not trying to eke out you know,
Speaker 2: one or two percent ev bets right, in part because
Speaker 2: I have a lot on the line anyway as far
Speaker 2: as the election goes, right, So I'm not trying to like,
Speaker 2: but if you're gonna give me a seventy five twenty
Speaker 2: five coin flip for one hundred K then I feel
Speaker 2: like I would be negligent to pass up on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So you know, tune in and uh and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll see how that goes. But the news for
Speaker 1: people who do want to make bets like this not
Speaker 1: on Twitter with Nate Silver, but in general on elections.
Speaker 1: We talked a few weeks ago about Calshi, which is
Speaker 1: a prediction market that actually operates within the United States
Speaker 1: real money bets and Calshie had been trying to for
Speaker 1: years basically make their way through the US court system
Speaker 1: to make election betting legal in the United States, to
Speaker 1: make those contracts legal here, and they had prevailed, and
Speaker 1: then the order was frozen, right, so their options on
Speaker 1: the election went live for a few hours and then
Speaker 1: they were no longer allowed to continue while the Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals reviewed this, and they have now ruled in
Speaker 1: favor of Calshie, and so people in the United States
Speaker 1: are once again allowed to bet on election outcomes. I
Speaker 1: actually got a very funny email from Interactive Brokers, which
Speaker 1: is an online trading platform on which I happened to
Speaker 1: have my retirement account, and they sent an email to
Speaker 1: everyone saying, hey, guys, like you can now bet on
Speaker 1: all of these election things we're going live, So it's
Speaker 1: something that immediately it seems like a lot of platforms
Speaker 1: were ready for this and are really excited to start
Speaker 1: taking these sorts of bets. But we actually had some
Speaker 1: listeners who were interested in our takes on a few
Speaker 1: different bet ideas. So one listener, David Paul, wrote in
Speaker 1: and asked, would we bet that twenty twenty four voter
Speaker 1: turnout will be higher or lower than in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: and why? And I thought that that was actually kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting bet proposition because you and I have
Speaker 1: discussed this a little bit in terms of how close
Speaker 1: an election is perceived to be and what the turnout
Speaker 1: is as a result of that, and also obviously how
Speaker 1: passionate people are and how engaged people are, right, and
Speaker 1: different different subsets of the population are more likely to
Speaker 1: actually go out and vote with their feet at the
Speaker 1: polls as opposed to vote on Twitter talk about how
Speaker 1: you know one candidate or the other, but then they
Speaker 1: don't actually go and cast a ballot. So what do
Speaker 1: we think about this? What do you think about this?
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask an important question. Are we talking
Speaker 2: about the raw number of voters or the share of
Speaker 2: the eligible voting population, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's discuss because because I actually don't know
Speaker 1: what has happened with voter registration. Has that gone up
Speaker 1: with you know, Taitay's endorsement and all of that. Are
Speaker 1: we actually seeing a much larger number of voter registrations
Speaker 1: than we saw four years ago?
Speaker 2: Look, so, first of all, I would probably bet on
Speaker 2: turn up being a bit lower than in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: especially with you know, if you are accounting for population growth,
Speaker 2: then it might be kind of a tass up. But
Speaker 2: if you're looking at the share of the population in
Speaker 2: part because like twenty twenty was a bit of an outlier,
Speaker 2: sixty six percent of eligible voters cast ballots. That was
Speaker 2: up from sixty percent in twenty sixteen and fifty nine
Speaker 2: percent in twenty twelve. And this is data from the
Speaker 2: University of floor or as Election Lab website. But we
Speaker 2: have had an increase, is you know? So turnout in
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty two midterm was forty six percent, which
Speaker 2: is high for a midterm, but down from twenty eighteen. Right,
Speaker 2: you know, when it was Biden versus Trump, people were
Speaker 2: distinctly unenthusiastic about this selection. With the events of the
Speaker 2: summer with Harris taking over for Biden, then there's more
Speaker 2: enthusiasm now. But but you know, twenty twenty turnout was
Speaker 2: really high, in part because it's a pandemic. There were
Speaker 2: more ways to vote than ever before. And I would
Speaker 2: vote on I know, sixty three percent of the voting
Speaker 2: eligible population instead of sixty.
Speaker 1: Six I suppose, so you would put your money on
Speaker 1: on lower turnout. And to be clear, we're not actually
Speaker 1: making a bet, We're not actually putting money on the
Speaker 1: line because this is not a topic that either one
Speaker 1: of us has probably a lot of conviction. And do
Speaker 1: you have to.
Speaker 2: Actually have a model. So the model predicts, oh, there
Speaker 2: we go, one hundred and fifty six million, six hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty five thousand, six hundred and eighty people exactly
Speaker 2: will vote. Okay, I obviously it's fake precision. Let me see, uh,
Speaker 2: let me see what the numbers were in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: They say one hundred and fifty eight uh point four
Speaker 2: million people voted, and I'm predicting our mouths one fifty
Speaker 2: six point seven, so that would be off by just
Speaker 2: a million or two.
Speaker 1: Okay, but lower but lower. So so your your gut,
Speaker 1: your gut was correct, and now the silver bulletin model
Speaker 1: has validated your gut at least as of now. And
Speaker 1: these numbers might change right as you get more data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean, so what we look at is
Speaker 2: polls asking people how enthusiastic they are about voting in
Speaker 2: the election, and people actually say they're pretty enthusiastic. However,
Speaker 2: turn out with just really high in twenty twenty, So
Speaker 2: until we see more confirmation of that than we're expecting
Speaker 2: some reversion to the mean.
Speaker 1: Great, well, if we're if we're going down that kind
Speaker 1: of Djen rabbit hole. I actually think it's in interesting
Speaker 1: because it does kind of touch on different pressure points
Speaker 1: of the election. So some other ideas, what's our over under,
Speaker 1: for one, major news outlets will actually call a winner.
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting one because I don't think
Speaker 1: either one of us particularly feels like the election is
Speaker 1: going to be over on November fifth, given how close
Speaker 1: it is and given the the way elections have gone
Speaker 1: in recent years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I mean the over under might be you know,
Speaker 2: November fifth is a Tuesday, maybe Saturday, excuse me, Thursday morning.
Speaker 2: The seventh. I mean keep in mind that, like the
Speaker 2: networks send to be really conservative about making these calls,
Speaker 2: except for Fox News, which weirdly called Arizona for Trump
Speaker 2: when it was great premature to do so. But leave
Speaker 2: that aside for a moment. Yeah, I remember doing in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. I was kind of like like in the
Speaker 2: boiler room, it's during COVID doing like these are PEATV
Speaker 2: hits over and over for ABC News, and like the networks,
Speaker 2: it was obvious. I thought by like midday Wednesday that
Speaker 2: Biden was going to have enough past to victory, but
Speaker 2: the networks didn't call it until Saturday morning. But I
Speaker 2: don't mean to make light of this. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: you know, another disputed election outcome where Trump is sowing
Speaker 2: doubt about the results, that would not be great for
Speaker 2: the US. I think people are not quite pricing in, uh,
Speaker 2: what's going to feel like if you have it, if
Speaker 2: you have an unclear, ambiguous, disputed election result.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I'm actually hoping that we do get
Speaker 1: a winner announced on the fifth or you know, on
Speaker 1: early morning of the sixth. I hope that we do
Speaker 1: have a very clear cut election, because I think that
Speaker 1: that is something that we need because we have you know,
Speaker 1: we've had some close calls and we've had a number
Speaker 1: of disputed elections in recent memory. So so that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a great place to be when you're looking at
Speaker 1: kind of when you're looking at democratic out outcomes and
Speaker 1: peaceful transitions of power. No.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you don't need that much of a
Speaker 2: polling er to have a pretty clear all right, if
Speaker 2: Trump beats his polls by three points, then he wins
Speaker 2: all the swing states. Likewise, for Harris, you could even
Speaker 2: win Florida, which was a source of dispute with Keith
Speaker 2: or boy. So, yeah, you know, on what other prep
Speaker 2: bets do we have? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, so there were a few others. One was in
Speaker 1: which of the swing states will polling to be turned
Speaker 1: out to be the most accurate and in which will
Speaker 1: it be the least accurate? So do you have as
Speaker 1: ours our pole guru, do you have a sense of
Speaker 1: how the polls are doing this year?
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe Georgia for most accurate. The polls have
Speaker 2: tended to be pretty accurate in Georgia in the past.
Speaker 2: And also like like in Georgia, like you kind of
Speaker 2: know everyone's going to vote, right, you have like the
Speaker 2: evangelical whites, the African American population, and like you have
Speaker 2: the you know, suburban so it's not like it's just
Speaker 2: a matter of kind of racing to see who can
Speaker 2: get more turnout, and that tends to make the polling
Speaker 2: a little bit easier versus states where you have like
Speaker 2: a lot of swing voters. But I'll go with Georgia
Speaker 2: as the most accurate polling state. Do you have an opinion, Maria, No, I.
Speaker 1: Don't because I don't know. You know, I don't follow
Speaker 1: the polls as the way that you do. I just
Speaker 1: look at your outcomes, and I tend to trust you
Speaker 1: obviously when it comes to pulling red when it comes
Speaker 1: to reading the polls, so I just kind of look
Speaker 1: to see what the prevailing wisdom is. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that it's one thing to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, these are high quality polls, these are worse
Speaker 1: quality polls, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But I
Speaker 1: think it takes expertise that I, frankly do not have
Speaker 1: to be able to say how accurate is polling within
Speaker 1: a state.
Speaker 2: I'm so torn on deferring to X, you know, because
Speaker 2: I want to how your friends like Keith r who
Speaker 2: clearly is outside his depth in this particular enterprise. A
Speaker 2: lot of the time the experts are full of shit
Speaker 2: and the non experts if I'm more full of shit? Right,
Speaker 2: Life is hard. It's hard to make predictions about things.
Speaker 1: It is hard to make predictions. And let's do a
Speaker 1: shout out to the work of Phil Tetlock, who was
Speaker 1: one of the first people to show how hard it
Speaker 1: is to make predictions and how you know experts are
Speaker 1: also often wrong. And but if we can't actually I'm
Speaker 1: curious to hear the answer to this. If we can't
Speaker 1: defer to experts, then you know what, who do we
Speaker 1: defer to? I mean, there's obviously, you know, going back
Speaker 1: to what we started off with, you know, with prediction
Speaker 1: markets and places like cal shan As. We know you're
Speaker 1: paid advisor for polymarket. I just I hate having to
Speaker 1: throw that disclaimer out every single time, but but I
Speaker 1: think we do have to throw it at every single time.
Speaker 1: Our prediction markets a better place, Like what do we
Speaker 1: defer to? Then if we can't, if we say, like
Speaker 1: you know, you can't really defer to experts, how do
Speaker 1: you figure out you know, how do I form an
Speaker 1: opinion on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, obviously my fan of prediction markets. I think
Speaker 2: I think one of if you read Phil Telllock's book
Speaker 2: that you reference, We're Expert Political judgment. I mean, you
Speaker 2: know that actually forced experts to make probabilistic predictions, right,
Speaker 2: Like what's the chance that the USSR will break up
Speaker 2: in the next ten years might have been a question
Speaker 2: that he asked. For example, when you encourage people to
Speaker 2: do that, then you actually create more accountability, You create
Speaker 2: a paper trail because the most part like experts don't
Speaker 2: actually have incentives to make accurate predictions, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, they have incentives to be ambiguous so they
Speaker 2: can't be proven wrong. And so you know, stuff like
Speaker 2: what we do at Silver Bulletin is actually quite unusual,
Speaker 2: and if experts were forced to come up with actual
Speaker 2: answers then they would do they would potentially be a
Speaker 2: little bit better, although I think we'd also expose people
Speaker 2: who are not very vigorous in their thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so then maybe we would be able to have
Speaker 1: kind of a hierarchy of expertise, which I think is
Speaker 1: something that is very would be very very helpful, at
Speaker 1: least to someone like me the other thing that happened
Speaker 1: in the news, kind of putting our little prop bets aside.
Speaker 1: Obviously we had the VP debates since you and I
Speaker 1: last spoke. Did that make any difference whatsoever? I know
Speaker 1: you've said over and over and over that you know,
Speaker 1: the VP debates don't really matter, piece don't usually matter.
Speaker 1: Have we seen them matter at all in the last
Speaker 1: week or no change.
Speaker 2: There's been oddly little polling of any kind. I think
Speaker 2: the polsearch just all decided to take the weekend off.
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, you can let me say something
Speaker 2: that will get clipped onto the Twitter, right, Like, I'm
Speaker 2: not into Tim Walls really, I mean he's fine, but like, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, there's all this discussion about like, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't want to the term sain washing. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't want to make Trump Advance seem insane, and
Speaker 2: he's like he's doing this whole nice guy thing. And
Speaker 2: I think Vance is just objectively like a better debater
Speaker 2: than Tim Walls. And Tim Walls was obviously extremely nervous
Speaker 2: for the first fifteen minutes of the debate, which is
Speaker 2: a part that people often remember, like it won't matter
Speaker 2: I don't think very much of the end. The polls
Speaker 2: showed that people thought the debate was a tie basically,
Speaker 2: but I don't know, you know, it's kind of you
Speaker 2: have your one job thing and you should really nail
Speaker 2: that debate. And he I think it was tactically not
Speaker 2: very good at going after JD. Vance and I'm I'm
Speaker 2: just not into it. I don't really understand, you know what.
Speaker 2: There's like feeling of euphoria after Harris replaced Biden, and
Speaker 2: I think people therefore overrated everything she did in that
Speaker 2: period after that. And if it were me, I would
Speaker 2: rather have, say, the extremely popular governor Pennsylvania, which is
Speaker 2: the most important tipping point of the state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's see what ends up happening, and after
Speaker 1: the break, we'll talk about betting on something else, which
Speaker 1: is betting on cards and poker bots. Nate, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, way back when you made a living professionally
Speaker 1: playing poker online playing limit hold him? Is that correct?
Speaker 2: That's correct? For preire to two for three years, I
Speaker 2: guess three years. Yeah, my main source of income was
Speaker 2: playing fricking party poker.
Speaker 1: And when was this let's put it on a timeline.
Speaker 2: It's two thousand and four to two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: and then then I had a year where let's not
Speaker 2: tell them, but I actually lost money in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven after the game's cut. So the US Congress
Speaker 2: passed a bill called the U I G E A
Speaker 2: EUG U G. Yeah, and once that happened, the game
Speaker 2: started to dry up and Party Poker closed. And but anyway, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm actually I was able to change my whole career
Speaker 2: by playing online poker basically.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the reason that I asked about this is
Speaker 1: this past week, we've had several blockbuster investigation pieces come
Speaker 1: out about bots in online poker and bots as kind
Speaker 1: of an existential three to the game. So the first
Speaker 1: of these came out on September twentieth, and it was
Speaker 1: a piece by kit Chilo, who has been doing this
Speaker 1: deep dive investigation into a massive, massive Russian bought. He
Speaker 1: calls it an army. So usually in the online poker
Speaker 1: world we talk about bot farms, but when you read
Speaker 1: this piece, you realize that, holy shit, army might actually
Speaker 1: be a legitimate way to look at this. So he
Speaker 1: had kind of found a few breadcrumbs that then led
Speaker 1: him to poker forms to people who actually were involved
Speaker 1: in this bot operation. And it turns out that this group,
Speaker 1: originally this group of students, then it grew much bigger,
Speaker 1: is working, you know, in the depths of Siberia, and
Speaker 1: these are stats nerds, college students who need extra income
Speaker 1: and they want to get better at poker, at online poker,
Speaker 1: and so they start kind of playing around with basically
Speaker 1: what you know today we'd call solver software. Then they
Speaker 1: start developing little bots to try to implement some of
Speaker 1: these ideas. Fast forward to kind of the capabilities that
Speaker 1: these bots can actually be deployed onto poker platforms, and
Speaker 1: these bots start being used and start winning money on
Speaker 1: online poker sites in great numbers. And then it turns
Speaker 1: out that some online poker sites might even be deploying
Speaker 1: bots themselves in order to generate artificially larger player pools,
Speaker 1: because if you're an online poker site, you don't particularly
Speaker 1: care if the person playing the rag is a little
Speaker 1: bot or a human as long as you get the money.
Speaker 1: And so then after this Bloomberg piece came out, a
Speaker 1: second piece came out by Jonathan Robb and he investigated
Speaker 1: further and actually named names of some online poker companies. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a very long introduction, so we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about this later, but it seems like we see quite
Speaker 1: the existential threat to online poker and to players and
Speaker 1: it like yourself who look at online poker as a
Speaker 1: way of making money. So what what do you think?
Speaker 1: You know, have you been following this poker BT explosion
Speaker 1: at all and have you given any thought to kind
Speaker 1: of the state of online poker play.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, I don't look at online
Speaker 2: poker as a way to make money. I look at
Speaker 2: it as a form of recreation, I suppose, because like
Speaker 2: to me, it seems like a somewhat unsolvable problem that
Speaker 2: you have solvers now that can that can give you
Speaker 2: a game theory optimal solution to a poker hand, never
Speaker 2: mind anything more advanced about like doing data mining particular opponents.
Speaker 2: You know, to me, unless you're interested when you're actually
Speaker 2: having somebody like physically on a camera or something. Then
Speaker 2: you know, combined with the fact that, like as it
Speaker 2: says the Bloomberg article, it's kind of a Darwinian struggle
Speaker 2: to begin with online poker, right, people are already playing
Speaker 2: pretty close to optimal that I just don't. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: want to have to live my life now trying to
Speaker 2: make money playing poker online. And and there are home
Speaker 2: games that people say, but I just think the risk
Speaker 2: is pretty is pretty high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when we when we look at kind of
Speaker 1: these further investigations. So this second article that I alluded to,
Speaker 1: the Jonathan rob piece in Poker Pro, he actually found
Speaker 1: kind of this one site, jack Poker that seemed to
Speaker 1: be almost entirely creating their playerpool out of bots, which
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy, right, And he you know, signed
Speaker 1: up as a real person with real money, and then
Speaker 1: he noticed these crazy patterns in their tournaments, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Went down that rabbit hole and actually saw that they
Speaker 1: were connected to their user interface was connected to this
Speaker 1: corporation that Chile had wrote about, the Bot Farm Corporation BFC,
Speaker 1: and what kind of they're deep play software, which is
Speaker 1: kind of these bots that they were deploying. And if
Speaker 1: it's true that sites like that are actually kind of
Speaker 1: embracing bots in some ways like that to me is
Speaker 1: quite worrying. By the way, time for my own disclaimer,
Speaker 1: as people know, but I should say I'm an ambassador
Speaker 1: for Poker Stars, which is also an online poker site.
Speaker 1: Poker Stars was not implicated in any of this, but
Speaker 1: you know, I should, I should throw that out there.
Speaker 2: I mean, like there are incentives to not have perceived
Speaker 2: or actual cheating. I suppose it just that, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean when you can like, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: mean it's I tried to play poker against chatchipt once.
Speaker 1: Really, how did that go?
Speaker 2: It's very nitty. No matter what options you give it, it
Speaker 2: always just checks the pot down, even if it has
Speaker 2: like the nuts. So you know, maybe we still have
Speaker 2: some time for humans to be better than Chetchapet at poker.
Speaker 2: But like, but you know, it's an asymmetric arms race.
Speaker 2: It's just hard for me to imagine that someone who
Speaker 2: is connected to a computer can't find efficient ways to cheat. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: This is clearly a real problem, and there are I
Speaker 1: do think there are solutions. By the way, you can
Speaker 1: usually figure it out when you're looking at deep analysis.
Speaker 1: So Nate, as a statistician and someone who does this
Speaker 1: kind of analysis, you can probably appreciate that if you
Speaker 1: have a database of you know, hundreds and thousands of hands,
Speaker 1: you can start seeing is this a person or is
Speaker 1: this a computer that has some sort of regular type
Speaker 1: of output and you know, flagging and getting rid of
Speaker 1: those things immediately is a is a big one the
Speaker 1: other one, And I don't think anyone wants to do this,
Speaker 1: but I think it could. I think it's potentially kind
Speaker 1: of the future of a safe poker environment is what
Speaker 1: if we play on camera? Right? Like, what if you
Speaker 1: have those types of checks where you actually try to
Speaker 1: monitor who's playing, how they're playing, et cetera. And even
Speaker 1: that's not perfect obviously, but there are certain things that
Speaker 1: you can start doing. But it takes a lot of resources,
Speaker 1: and the incentives, unfortunately, are often with the players. And
Speaker 1: as you said, it is an arms race, like we
Speaker 1: can learn to try to figure out, oh, what's this
Speaker 1: kind of bot look like? What does that kind of
Speaker 1: bot look like? And then someone comes up with something better,
Speaker 1: someone who deviates or you know, something that looks more
Speaker 1: human like like the Turing test. Right, every single year
Speaker 1: becomes more and more likely that we'll actually have someone
Speaker 1: be able to beat the Turing test. I think all
Speaker 1: of our listeners probably know what the Turing test is,
Speaker 1: but do we want to pause for a second to
Speaker 1: explain what that is for people who might not know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think probably most people know. But the Turing
Speaker 2: test is basically, can you program I mean it's actually
Speaker 2: anticipates chat GPT pretty well, right, but can you tell
Speaker 2: if you're having a conversation with a human being versus
Speaker 2: a computer? And yeah, no, I mean like CHUTCHIPT, I
Speaker 2: mean it has signature for example, frequently says as a
Speaker 2: large language model, which is something that like. But the
Speaker 2: thing even that though, like, you know, so if you
Speaker 2: do play online poker and you're playing a lot of
Speaker 2: hours and sometimes you get a prompt saying prove that
Speaker 2: you're a human, right, do some task now that proves
Speaker 2: that you're a human and not just a bot. But
Speaker 2: the thing is, though, like you could intentionally introduce some
Speaker 2: degree of like randomization. I mean, one thing about cheaters
Speaker 2: in general is that most cheaters are really greedy, or
Speaker 2: at least the ones that get caught right, and so
Speaker 2: they cheat too much. When if you were a smart
Speaker 2: cheater and poker could just kind of get away with
Speaker 2: the edge cases where you magically happen to know in
Speaker 2: the spot where you're a different what your opponent has
Speaker 2: on the river, And instead people get very greedy, but
Speaker 2: I just think it's kind of asymmetric warfare. In the end,
Speaker 2: life poker is good, though, yes, more life poker.
Speaker 1: I agree. I think life poker is certainly a for know,
Speaker 1: though not altogether safe. You know, we've we've had live
Speaker 1: cheating scandals as well.
Speaker 2: And this has always bugging me at like poker is
Speaker 2: quite forgiving. I think of cheating other bad behavior and
Speaker 2: ways like yeah, it should just be banned for many
Speaker 2: casino for lifetime or for five years and for things
Speaker 2: like that, and instead they're kind of like slap on
Speaker 2: the wrist at the time. Yeah, you know, Isaac Heckson,
Speaker 2: I talked to you for the book, one of the
Speaker 2: best players in the world, and told me that his
Speaker 2: ROI and online poker is about ten percent, which is
Speaker 2: not actually very good, or said under ten percent in
Speaker 2: the single digits, right, So forever, forever, thousand dollars he
Speaker 2: invests in playing a tournament, that's one of the best
Speaker 2: players in the world, you know, maybe he has an
Speaker 2: expected return of fifty or sixty dollars from that, Like
Speaker 2: that's actually, given the variants of poker, not a very
Speaker 2: good deal, right, And if he one of the ten
Speaker 2: to twelve best players in the world is only making
Speaker 2: that much, then I I don't think very many people
Speaker 2: are really beating online poker sites without cheating in the
Speaker 2: long run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's that's very sobering. I did
Speaker 1: not I did not realize that that I could communicated
Speaker 1: those numbers to you if if one of the best
Speaker 1: players in the world says that, but I will caveat
Speaker 1: that was saying. Mike also plays in a lot of
Speaker 1: much harder games, right, He's probably not playing in some
Speaker 1: of the lower buying tournaments that you know, you and
Speaker 1: I would would play in. He's probably playing the high rollers.
Speaker 2: But still, it's pretty it's pretty frightening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, for sure. So I'm very curious to see,
Speaker 1: you know, what the fallout is going to be of
Speaker 1: all of this, whether sites are going to address it,
Speaker 1: whether they're you know, what the what the changes are
Speaker 1: going to be. There was you know, for instance, I
Speaker 1: the last poker live Poker I played was European Poker
Speaker 1: Tory PT Barcelona, and at that stop that happened right
Speaker 1: after there were some cheating allegations. We we we don't
Speaker 1: have to go into into details on those, but of
Speaker 1: live poker and of certain methods of being able to
Speaker 1: kind of see cards live at the table. And so
Speaker 1: what Poker Stars announced at the stop was some new rules,
Speaker 1: including no phones on the tables, no phones on the rails.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, things like that actually
Speaker 1: show that, Okay, we're we're trying to take some of
Speaker 1: these threats seriously as they're evolving. And I went to
Speaker 1: step further and I said, you know what, like we
Speaker 1: should ban phones at the table period, We should ban
Speaker 1: sunglasses at the table. You know, there are certain things
Speaker 1: that like we just know that there's cheating technology that
Speaker 1: can be used in those instances. And I love having
Speaker 1: my phone, but you know, I'm willing to put it
Speaker 1: on the floor and to not touch it for an hour,
Speaker 1: Like I'm okay with that, And I actually think it
Speaker 1: would be very good for everyone's mental health to not
Speaker 1: have your phone on you.
Speaker 2: Twenty four se day, Day twenty six of fifty two
Speaker 2: with the Worldter's of Poker, You're playing in some eight
Speaker 2: hundred dollars freeze out ten handed with the guy from Buffalo,
Speaker 2: who I mean is taking fifteen seconds to fold. I mean,
Speaker 2: you want your fucking phone, don't you?
Speaker 1: I do want my fucking phone, but for the greater
Speaker 1: good of the things.
Speaker 2: Why I'm making fun of Buffalo by the way, we
Speaker 2: love Buffalo.
Speaker 1: Oh, Buffalo has taken some flack from us in the past.
Speaker 1: I just remembered because you were.
Speaker 2: Forgot the unexpected layover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had a Buffalo layover anyway, Sorry, Buffalo, You're great.
Speaker 1: But you know I would I would take one for
Speaker 1: the team and be willing to give up my phone
Speaker 1: a little bit if it meant you know, game integrity
Speaker 1: and things that are kind of safer for the game. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, But just to wrap this up,
Speaker 1: I think there are existential threats. We need to address them,
Speaker 1: and we need to figure out kind of the best
Speaker 1: way forward because I think you and I both feel
Speaker 1: that poker is a great game and a game that
Speaker 1: can really kind of help people think better, make better decisions,
Speaker 1: and be great if people could safely continue playing in
Speaker 1: all in all forms, and I hope that happens.
Speaker 2: Speaking about existential threats, you want to talk about open
Speaker 2: AI real quick?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So now we've been talking about existential threats to poker,
Speaker 1: and after the break, let's talk about open an AI
Speaker 1: and revisit some of those existential threats day a while ago.
Speaker 1: I think the last time we spoke about the concept
Speaker 1: of p doom was what a few months back, right
Speaker 1: where we talked about the risk that AI poses to
Speaker 1: the world. Last week, in the last week, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of news coming out of open Ai, a
Speaker 1: lot of new departures and a lot of fundra saying.
Speaker 2: So yeah, open ai raised six point six billion, we
Speaker 2: are told by our reliable producers, at one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty seven billion dollar valuation. It is losing a lot
Speaker 2: of money. By the way, this hardware is expensive, compute
Speaker 2: is expensive. The commercialization has not been great so far,
Speaker 2: but people are betting on the upside outcome of this
Speaker 2: being you know, maybe the leading AI company. But it's begun.
Speaker 2: You know. Open ai began its life as a nonprofit
Speaker 2: co founded by.
Speaker 1: Rest and Peace and nonprofits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, co founded by Elon Musk and Sam Maltman. You know, look, Evon,
Speaker 2: he does an impressive array of things. I know that's
Speaker 2: gonna like really piss off half our audience, right, but
Speaker 2: like the fact that this isn't even his main thing.
Speaker 2: It's not Tesla or SpaceX, and that he has open
Speaker 2: AI and and neurallink, and for some reason it decides
Speaker 2: to invest his time on Twitter slash x instead. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so open I has been in various formal and informal
Speaker 2: ways moving further and further away from this notion of
Speaker 2: being a nonprofit. You have had a great number of
Speaker 2: the alignment people, meaning people that are so alignment is
Speaker 2: an AI term for is AI compatible with human values? Now?
Speaker 2: Whose values are these? And what's it mean to be compatible?
Speaker 2: Are big open questions. But basically Open Eye is giving
Speaker 2: up on much of the much of the pretense I
Speaker 2: suppose of being an AI safety company, and instead, you know,
Speaker 2: Sam Baltman is just saying the benefits outweigh the risks.
Speaker 2: In a recent post, for example, he claims that we
Speaker 2: will fix the climate, establish a space colony, and have
Speaker 2: the discovery of all physics, and these will be commonplace
Speaker 2: things in the age of AI with nearly limitless intelligence
Speaker 2: and abundant energy. He claims, you know, when I talked
Speaker 2: to when I talked to in twenty twenty two, I
Speaker 2: guess it was he's like, yeah, I think that AI
Speaker 2: will solve all of poverty. So he's he's kind of
Speaker 2: a DJA. I think I don't mean that about his
Speaker 2: personal life. I just mean that, like he is willing
Speaker 2: to make this big gamble, not because he thinks said
Speaker 2: it's to completely safe. He is clear that there are
Speaker 2: these risks, but I think he thinks that the rewards
Speaker 2: outstripped the risks.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, I mean, I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: all this limitless energy is coming from. Because in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we've got Microsoft making plans to reopen Three Mile Island
Speaker 1: the nuclear power plant, because frankly, our power grid cannot
Speaker 1: keep up with the demands of open AI and chat
Speaker 1: GPT and what is happening there. So I think that people,
Speaker 1: you know, when we talk about existential risk, where we're
Speaker 1: talking about a lot of different things, but like the
Speaker 1: energy demand is crazy. Like I'm very pro nuclear power,
Speaker 1: Like I think that, you know, we should be building
Speaker 1: a lot of safe nuclear power plants. Like I think
Speaker 1: that that's a great way of how the world kind
Speaker 1: of reach energy neutral status. But it's crazy that the
Speaker 1: first time people have actually like talked about and thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe we can reopen this this power
Speaker 1: plant that's been shut down.
Speaker 2: Changed it, like give it some corporate confinity or something.
Speaker 2: Don't call it three Mile Island.
Speaker 1: Let's see right, No, that's a really bad name. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the first time that they're actually like, they're like okay,
Speaker 1: Like before they're like no, no, no, like three Mile Island,
Speaker 1: horrible disaster, blah blah blah. And then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: open AI needs it. You know, we need it for
Speaker 1: being able to do memes with chat GBT. Hey, everyone
Speaker 1: ask chat GPT this. Okay, let's let's reopen this. So
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, it's just absolutely backwards and to me,
Speaker 1: like a really perplexing state of affairs that he would say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we're solving everything. But so far,
Speaker 1: what I see is that they haven't solved a lot,
Speaker 1: and most of what they've done, you know, is actually
Speaker 1: things that have been both physically polluting the world and
Speaker 1: just polluting my head by creating an Internet full of
Speaker 1: just absolute like hallucinatory bullshit that is really difficult to
Speaker 1: parse through. Makes goop. By the way Google results now,
Speaker 1: I don't know about unit, but like I'm looking for
Speaker 1: a new search engine because it's unusable. I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck? You know? I try, I try to search
Speaker 1: for something. It's good to searches, and it's just I
Speaker 1: just want it. Can I just rant about this for
Speaker 1: one second? It seems like you want to join me now, Like,
Speaker 1: first we have this AI summary, which is usually wrong,
Speaker 1: like it's actually given me like absolutely incorrect information in
Speaker 1: that summer and I'm like, wait, no, I know this
Speaker 1: is not true, this is not at all. And then
Speaker 1: it's all these anyway, and now it's just completely unusable.
Speaker 1: I'll let you interrupt me, because you look like you
Speaker 1: have something to say.
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I mean, so a lot of it's
Speaker 2: driven by ads, right, but yeah, the aioorviews are often
Speaker 2: not very good. And the whole point of search engine
Speaker 2: is I don't want your fucking summary of it. I
Speaker 2: want to go to a website, right, I want to
Speaker 2: choose which website I go to. Just give me a
Speaker 2: list of good fucking websites, Google, And instead you have
Speaker 2: this like AI summary, which I think is a product
Speaker 2: that is frankly behind both chatchipt and Claude, which is
Speaker 2: the anthropic product. And I think Google is terrified because say,
Speaker 2: Google developed the transformer algorithm, right, Google has harnessed a
Speaker 2: lot of the talent but they've had for years, they've
Speaker 2: had like a brain drain and more. Why that is
Speaker 2: for internal cultural reasons, I won't speculate, but like, but
Speaker 2: I wish that Google didn't like shove this mediocre version
Speaker 2: of AI for its once very wonderful search product in
Speaker 2: our in our face. That that really annoys me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we're it really annoys me too. And you know, listeners,
Speaker 1: please recommend a good search engine that you actually trust,
Speaker 1: that gives reliable results instead of Google, because it's just
Speaker 1: it's just killing me. But this kind of drek, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that we're seeing so far.
Speaker 1: It hasn't revolutionized humanity. It's created a lot of drek
Speaker 1: or slop as as some writers have called it. And
Speaker 1: you know, the the Internet is it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: more difficult to use. And when I go to look for,
Speaker 1: you know, answers to things, oftentimes I can't figure out.
Speaker 1: Unless I go to like, you know, Bloomberg right or
Speaker 1: The New York Times or just a site that I
Speaker 1: know to be trustworthy, I can't even figure it out.
Speaker 1: And even then, if I go to ESPN, they have
Speaker 1: articles that have been written by chatbots right by chat
Speaker 1: GBT by other AI kind of large language models, and
Speaker 1: they often create fake names and fake photographs. And I'm
Speaker 1: singling out ESPN because I know it doesn't I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know what other sites do it, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a problem where I, you know, before I was thinking
Speaker 1: of p doom in terms of like the world's going
Speaker 1: to help and we're going to not survive, but also
Speaker 1: there's like a p doom of my brain and of
Speaker 1: the usability of the Internet. And I'm like, what the
Speaker 1: hell is happening right, Like this is really cognitive load
Speaker 1: is going up. It's over taxing me, and like I
Speaker 1: don't want to have to deal with this, Like just
Speaker 1: give me real articles, real information, real people, like things
Speaker 1: I can trust, and don't give me. Don't force me
Speaker 1: to have to like figure out you know, two paragraphs
Speaker 1: in Wait, this is definitely not written by a human,
Speaker 1: and I can't trust anything it says.
Speaker 2: You know, Look, when Sam Altman says we're going to
Speaker 2: solve all of physics, I mean that that to me. Uh,
Speaker 2: I'm a little skeptical about that, right. I think we
Speaker 2: kind of end up in like many universes where AI
Speaker 2: is a highly useful product maybe not good for society,
Speaker 2: maybe not. But like, I don't know, I don't really
Speaker 2: think that we're going to solve all of physics through
Speaker 2: deep learning, right, I mean, I, you know, to extrapolate
Speaker 2: out to these super human accomplishments from doing human things, well,
Speaker 2: I think it's I think the jury is still out
Speaker 2: and where that will occur or not. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: should your pea doom be going up as a result
Speaker 2: of this, I suppose though for me it kind of
Speaker 2: seems like the inevitable game theory optimal out come anyway, right,
Speaker 2: is that people pursue profit in the capitalist system, and
Speaker 2: that you know, and that it's the role of the
Speaker 2: public sector decide if, how and when we want to
Speaker 2: regulate AI companies. Gavin Newsome vetoed and AI regulation bill
Speaker 2: actually had passed the California Congress.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was that was kind of crazy, and
Speaker 1: his justification for doing it was kind of crazy. You know,
Speaker 1: he said that it's only targeting certain companies. That's fine, Okay,
Speaker 1: pass it and then do another one to target other companies.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that I think that this is
Speaker 1: a really kind of interesting situation that we're in right now.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see how it evolves. But I wish,
Speaker 1: you know, I wish that we weren't taking such a
Speaker 1: toll on you know, collective brain power, on environment, on
Speaker 1: other things as we wait to see what regulation will
Speaker 1: happen and what will actually happen. Do you have a
Speaker 1: percentage for your new P doom or not?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: You know, we're not going to put numbers.
Speaker 2: Given enough percentages today, I feel like I give the
Speaker 2: exact number.
Speaker 1: That's fair, that's fair. But yes, I now have two
Speaker 1: P dooms. I have my PE doom with the capital D,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the world destroying, and I have
Speaker 1: a lowercase P doom, which is my brain blowing up
Speaker 1: because of all of the bullshit that's happening on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So this is just my play, Like, let's let's try
Speaker 1: to reverse some of this, and let's try to make
Speaker 1: the internet back into a usable experience, because otherwise we're
Speaker 1: going to have to it's about to say, otherwise we're
Speaker 1: going to have to just keep go to libraries again
Speaker 1: and like just rely on paper. But we can't even
Speaker 1: do that because libraries have become inundated with books that
Speaker 1: have been written by any guys and librarians have to
Speaker 1: know try to figure out what the hell to do
Speaker 1: with this. So it's a problem that's just permeating everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I'm not happy about it. And on that note,
Speaker 1: I think, I think we've talked a lot today about
Speaker 1: about some interesting trends, and I'm very curious to see
Speaker 1: how all of these different things will develop. And I'm
Speaker 1: I would like to be an optimist and say that
Speaker 1: things will get better, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: I used to, and I think I'm an optimis I mean,
Speaker 2: think about how nurotic most people are, right compared to
Speaker 2: most people, I'm an optimist.
Speaker 1: All right? And these are two optimists signing off on this.
Speaker 2: Week's Risky Business.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2: And me Mate Silver.
Speaker 1: The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: And if you want to listen to an AD free version,
Speaker 2: sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six sinety nine a month,
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Speaker 1: J