Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalists.
Speaker 3: At Comedy Central, it's America's only sources for news.
Speaker 2: This is the Daily Joke with your host Jordan Clepper.
Speaker 2: What's for them?
Speaker 4: J'all?
Speaker 5: I Jordan Flipper. We got so much to talk about tonight.
Speaker 5: Kamala and Trump prepare for tomorrow night's debates. We hunt
Speaker 5: down the person who's sending you all those campaign emails,
Speaker 5: and Dick Cheney is once again taking shots at his
Speaker 5: Republican friends. So let's get into our continuing coverage of
Speaker 5: Indecision twenty twenty four. So we at the Daily Show
Speaker 5: have been on a little bit of a summer break
Speaker 5: the past couple of weeks, and when we left off,
Speaker 5: Vice President Harris was riding a wave of momentum with
Speaker 5: a successful convention and surging in the polls.
Speaker 2: Since then, Sure, sure, I don't know.
Speaker 5: If that's a fair counting, but we'll take it. Since then,
Speaker 5: I've been out of the loop, just sitting on a
Speaker 5: sandy beach, sipping on some my ties, and I can
Speaker 5: only assume Kamala remains on a smooth path to victory
Speaker 5: in November. So perhaps I'll take a comically large sip
Speaker 5: of this drink I brought back from the beach for
Speaker 5: some reason, and see what I missed.
Speaker 6: Former President Donald Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris by
Speaker 6: a razor thin margin forty seven percent among likely voters.
Speaker 5: That was a good drink, But that poll is not good.
Speaker 5: Kamala is down a point. Seriously, she's saying, never tried
Speaker 5: to overthrow the government, not six hundred years old with
Speaker 5: a rap sheet. I mean, what else does Kamala have
Speaker 5: to do? Two interviews and come on, be reasonable people.
Speaker 5: But okay, here we are less than two months out
Speaker 5: from the election. We've basically got a tide race. The
Speaker 5: candidates are doing everything they can do to ramp up
Speaker 5: the excitement. Kamala is speaking to voters in Pennsylvania and
Speaker 5: spice stores. Trump is speaking to voters and caston bulletproof glass,
Speaker 5: and JD. Vance is trying to counter accusations that he's
Speaker 5: weird by swimming in the pool with his shirt on.
Speaker 5: Starting to feel bad for this guy in this time around.
Speaker 5: Trump may hang his VP out of mercy, although if
Speaker 5: you ask me, this might be the most relatable thing
Speaker 5: jd Vance has ever done.
Speaker 2: Don't worry JD.
Speaker 5: I'm with you, and so are millions of other men
Speaker 5: with Pepperoni nipples. I see you, I see you, I
Speaker 5: see you Now.
Speaker 2: While JD.
Speaker 5: Van's appeals to the self conscious middle schooler vote, Donald
Speaker 5: Trump has secured the endorsement up RFK Junior, Tulsea Gabbard,
Speaker 5: and Elon Musk, three people who will help Trump reach
Speaker 5: voters who are undecided about what shape the earth is. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris just got an endorsement of her own.
Speaker 6: Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney announced that he will
Speaker 6: not vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump, but instead we'll
Speaker 6: back the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5: Wow Wow, Wow, See, Kamala has something for everyone. Whether
Speaker 5: you're a trans person of color, or a white construction
Speaker 5: worker in the heartland, or an unrepentant war criminal who
Speaker 5: needs the blood of Iraqi children to power the machine
Speaker 5: that keeps them alive and out of the flames of
Speaker 5: hell for one more day.
Speaker 2: Is your candidates.
Speaker 5: And by the way, apologies to those of you who
Speaker 5: saw Dick Cheney's name trending on Twitter over the weekend
Speaker 5: and we're like, oh my god, this is it. But sorry,
Speaker 5: all of these endorsements and campaign stops and solo wet
Speaker 5: T shirt contests. Well, we'll come to a head tomorrow
Speaker 5: night when Kamala and Donald face off in a debate
Speaker 5: that could decide this election.
Speaker 2: And I don't need to tell.
Speaker 5: You how high the stakes are, because we all remember
Speaker 5: how the last debate between Trump and Joe Biden went,
Speaker 5: you know, not as bad as I remembered. Now, Kamala
Speaker 5: definitely has an advantage compared to Biden because of the
Speaker 5: whole not being riddled by age thing. But she's still
Speaker 5: preparing diligently. Perhaps two diligently.
Speaker 3: Sources who are familiar with how Vice President Harris is
Speaker 3: preparing for the debate tell me she is diligently getting
Speaker 3: ready for this by going to a hotel in Pittsburgh
Speaker 3: spending hours doing mock debates, including with an aide who
Speaker 3: is dressing like former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, you're you're having a guide dressed like Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: Is that something the campaign thinks she needs to prepare
Speaker 5: for now, Madam Vice President, he might come out we're
Speaker 5: in a tie that's slightly longer than usual.
Speaker 2: Don't freak out. We trained for this.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Trump is preparing for the debate a little differently.
Speaker 7: All the report indicates that he's taking this easy, taking
Speaker 7: this casually.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have debate prep, so to speak. He has
Speaker 2: what they call policy.
Speaker 7: Time, just to refresh his memory about what he might
Speaker 7: say on stage.
Speaker 5: Oh, they're giving him policy time, such an important part
Speaker 5: of childhood developments. You can do it, Donald, two more
Speaker 5: minutes of policy time, and then you can watch three
Speaker 5: paw patrols.
Speaker 2: But you know what, it's good to know that Trump is.
Speaker 5: Getting into the nitty gritty of policy because you want
Speaker 5: a president who's up to speed on the nuances of
Speaker 5: the issues. It isn't just pulling stuff out of his ass.
Speaker 7: Kamala support states being able to take minor children and
Speaker 7: perform sex change operation. Can you imagine you're a parent
Speaker 7: and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy,
Speaker 7: I love you so much, go have a good day
Speaker 7: in school, and your son comes back with a brutal operation.
Speaker 1: Can you even imagine this?
Speaker 5: No? No, no, I can't imagine this because it's an
Speaker 5: insane thing you just made up.
Speaker 2: Do you do you really?
Speaker 5: Do you really think a kid goes to school one
Speaker 5: day and comes back with a full sex change operation.
Speaker 5: That's ridiculous. Americans getting free health.
Speaker 1: Care not happening.
Speaker 5: No, fuck, no, Donald, Donald, Donald, do you think it's
Speaker 5: even remotely a possibility? Apart from everything else. One time
Speaker 5: in middle school, I told the nurse I had a
Speaker 5: stomach ache, and she put a band aid on my stomach.
Speaker 5: I have a hard time believing they're doing full scale operations. Well,
Speaker 5: you know, you know what, everybody's thinking a lot about
Speaker 5: school safety, and it's refreshing to see a politician take
Speaker 5: a step beyond thoughts and prayers and actually do something
Speaker 5: to protect our children from the biggest threat they face
Speaker 5: at school.
Speaker 2: Mass sex changes.
Speaker 5: Apparently, some people would say that Donald Trump's biggest challenge
Speaker 5: at the debate tomorrow so that he can't open his
Speaker 5: mouth without rambling incoherently. But if you ask Trump about this,
Speaker 5: he says, no, No, I ramble very coherently, and I.
Speaker 7: Look forward to the debate with her.
Speaker 2: You know, I do the weave.
Speaker 7: You know what the weave is. I'll talk about like
Speaker 7: nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together,
Speaker 7: and it's like and friends of mine that are like
Speaker 7: English professors, they say it's the most brilliant thing I've
Speaker 7: ever seen.
Speaker 5: Oh, yes, the weave. I thought your brain was broken,
Speaker 5: But now that you did those hand motion things, I
Speaker 5: see it's a tactic. I mean, all your English professor
Speaker 5: friends are impressed. Which professor is that? Is that Professor
Speaker 5: Hogan or doctor Rock? I mean, forget English professors. Trump's
Speaker 5: friends are barely English speakers. For more of the candidate's
Speaker 5: debate preparation, let's go live to Philadelphia with Grace cooland
Speaker 5: spit Grace, Grace, I'm curious, Grace is Kamala Harris prepared
Speaker 5: to handle Donald Trump at tomorrow's debate.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be tough. Remember Donald Trump grew up in
Speaker 4: Queen's so he's a street fighter like Ken and Ryu.
Speaker 4: Remember that the fireball Odakin. That reminds me My first
Speaker 4: sex dream was about Blanca from Street Fighter Too. We
Speaker 4: were on a Disney cruise.
Speaker 5: Ship for some reason. One thing people don't.
Speaker 4: Know is they have jails on cruise ships because if
Speaker 4: you rob someone, they have to put you somewhere. But
Speaker 4: the jails are too small to hold more than two
Speaker 4: people at a time, so you just have criminals roaming
Speaker 4: the halls of our cruise ships. Just like our Democrat
Speaker 4: cities under Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 5: Back to you, Jordan, woohoo, whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Grace, Grace,
Speaker 5: what the hell have you been talking about?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Jordan, I'm doing the weave.
Speaker 5: See.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's a master level talking mechanism, and it's why
Speaker 4: you just lost this debate.
Speaker 5: This is not a debate. I asked you for information
Speaker 5: and you responded with incoherent rambling.
Speaker 4: Boy, you sound just like my high school teachers. But
Speaker 4: thanks to Donald Trump, we now know that we can
Speaker 4: rebrand our character flaws into something we're flattering. I'm not
Speaker 4: bad with money, I'm fiscally promiscuous, sexy right.
Speaker 5: I didn't wet the bed.
Speaker 4: I'm a sheet durability analyst, sexy right. And I definitely
Speaker 4: did not fall into a pothole this morning because I
Speaker 4: was watching tiktoks about Japanese toilets. I'm the key plaintiff
Speaker 4: in a class action lawsuit chit ching.
Speaker 5: Okay, look, look, I get that rebranding in your flaws
Speaker 5: makes them sound fancier, but everyone still knows you're fiscally irresponsible, Bedwether.
Speaker 4: But America has been rebranding since the beginning, Christopher Columbus
Speaker 4: thought he landed in India, but when he found out
Speaker 4: he wasn't, he rebranded it to America. And tomorrow, Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris will need to rebrand the Biden administration. You need
Speaker 4: to convince us Democrats that we won't wet the bed anymore,
Speaker 4: but we'll fill the potholes of America, the America we
Speaker 4: dream about. Well, we're having sex with Blanca on that
Speaker 4: cruise ship, and that's how she'll win the debate.
Speaker 5: Wait, Grace, did you just weave everything back into the
Speaker 5: topic sexy?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Great school, everyone, we'll come back.
Speaker 5: We'll be the most important person in this election to
Speaker 5: stick around. Well about to the Daily Show? I think
Speaker 5: I speak for all of us when I say that
Speaker 5: my favorite part of election season is all the emails
Speaker 5: I get from candidates asking for money. But do you
Speaker 5: ever wonder who's really writing all those great emails? Well,
Speaker 5: we have The Daily Show found out you're justin.
Speaker 8: Have you seen the latest polls? We need you to
Speaker 8: send five dollars now to defend democracy?
Speaker 1: And sent nailed it?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 8: Who am? I? I go by many names, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 8: Robert de Niro parentheses via Kamala Harris dot com and
Speaker 8: parentheses smart Kelly, but my real name Susan Calipenny McIntyre,
Speaker 8: and I write fundraising emails for political campaigns. I never
Speaker 8: thought that this is what I'd be doing for a living,
Speaker 8: but all my life people have told me you have
Speaker 8: the personality for this. Is there anything I can do
Speaker 8: to convince you? I need these glasses before midnight. I'm
Speaker 8: depending on you to act now. I'm pleading with you
Speaker 8: to pick me up so we can get to work together.
Speaker 2: This could be historic. I need your help.
Speaker 8: I was scouted at a young age after I sent
Speaker 8: a letter to new kids on the block saying that
Speaker 8: the very fate of the world depended on all of
Speaker 8: them marrying me.
Speaker 5: How silly.
Speaker 8: Only one of them did, But the letter caught the
Speaker 8: attention of a gubernatorial campaign and launched my political career.
Speaker 8: What I do is a highly specialized skill. Obviously, during
Speaker 8: a presidential election year, I'm crazy busy. I usually write
Speaker 8: between four to six emails a week, four to six
Speaker 8: hundred million million. Yeah, I burned through a lot at keyboards.
Speaker 8: Funny story, I have no feeling in my fingertips anymore.
Speaker 5: Check this out.
Speaker 8: Nothing in democracy. The hours are crazy. Oh words, Can
Speaker 8: I count on you before midnight?
Speaker 1: Can I?
Speaker 5: Okay? Love you too? Moms.
Speaker 8: The first emails go out at five am. The last
Speaker 8: batch goes out five minutes before midnight. Sometimes this job
Speaker 8: gets in the way of my personal relationships. Hey, sorry, kiddo,
Speaker 8: working late again. Hey, brush your teeth or they'll crumble
Speaker 8: like our Senate majority if we don't raise ten thousand
Speaker 8: dollars with the FEC filing deadline. Love you okay, battery die.
Speaker 8: But when I'm home, I leave work at the door.
Speaker 5: It's over.
Speaker 8: What if we don't rush to get these dishes done,
Speaker 8: we'll miss the beginning of Blue Bloods.
Speaker 1: Jesus, you don't have to be so dramatic.
Speaker 5: Fine, I'll just get my tubes tied.
Speaker 3: I don't talk to her anymore.
Speaker 5: I once lent her five dollars for lunch, and she's
Speaker 5: called me every day for three years.
Speaker 2: I can't escape her.
Speaker 8: The work is the work, and I am the work.
Speaker 8: The work is me. I am the work. But more importantly,
Speaker 8: I'm making a difference. Send Send, Send, Send, we come back.
Speaker 2: You've all know a hurrah. We'll be joining me on
Speaker 2: the shows.
Speaker 5: We'll go away.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Daily Show.
Speaker 5: My guest Tonight is an historian and a New York
Speaker 5: Times bestselling author whose latest book is called Nexus, A
Speaker 5: Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.
Speaker 5: Please welcome, you've all Noah Harari. You are a popular writer.
Speaker 5: Your books have sold over forty five million copies.
Speaker 3: Whoo.
Speaker 5: The Atlantic referred to some of your writing style as
Speaker 5: since the Dawn of Time style books.
Speaker 2: You go way back and.
Speaker 5: You bring us into the future. These are big important
Speaker 5: tones simultaneously. I heard you meditate for two hours every
Speaker 5: single day. Yes, how do you make all this happen?
Speaker 1: I don't have kids.
Speaker 2: You don't have kids.
Speaker 5: What have I done? Why don't you write a pamphlets
Speaker 5: that says just that you want to get shipped done?
Speaker 5: Don't have kids.
Speaker 1: Some people manage to do both, you know, but you.
Speaker 5: Have time to dive into this. I'm curious. This book
Speaker 5: is about information. Yeah, and you reject the notion that
Speaker 5: more information is a good thing, that it leads to
Speaker 5: truth and wisdom. Is this you being jaded by the
Speaker 5: Trump administration and the time we're in or does this
Speaker 5: thought process go back?
Speaker 1: You know, it's basically like thinking that more food is
Speaker 1: always good for you. You know, there is a limit
Speaker 1: to how much food the body needs, and in a
Speaker 1: similar way, there is a limit to how much food
Speaker 1: for the full food for the mind the mind needs,
Speaker 1: which is information. And the same way that most there
Speaker 1: is so much junk food outer, there is also so
Speaker 1: much junk information ou there, and we basically need to
Speaker 1: go on an information diet.
Speaker 5: Yes, but I need my sweet sweet Twitter snacks.
Speaker 2: I need it.
Speaker 5: I need it.
Speaker 1: It's exactly that. The same way that over the last
Speaker 1: few generations they learned the industries learned how to produce
Speaker 1: artificial food, which is pumped full of fat and sugar
Speaker 1: and salt and is addictive and not good for us,
Speaker 1: they've also learned how to manufacture this artificial information, which
Speaker 1: is pumped full of greed and hate and fear and
Speaker 1: is addictive to our mind and isn't good for it.
Speaker 5: Now, I totally agree, and I feel stuffed on all
Speaker 5: of it. But we also have this feeling that when
Speaker 5: you step outside of this information mainstream, that's just that
Speaker 5: this pipeline of bs that is out there that you
Speaker 5: certainly step out of the conversation. It feels like we
Speaker 5: don't have the luxury of going on a diet if
Speaker 5: we want to be part of the conversation around.
Speaker 1: Us, because the conversation is increasingly managed not by human
Speaker 1: beings but by algorithms, and algorithms function in a completely
Speaker 1: different way than us. They are not organic. For instance,
Speaker 1: human beings, as organic animals, we run by cycles. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we need to be very active, sometimes we need to rest.
Speaker 1: But algorithms never rest. They are tireless, and they expect
Speaker 1: us to be the same. So we now live in
Speaker 1: this news cycle which never rests. And the same thing
Speaker 1: happens in politics, in finance. You know previously if you
Speaker 1: think about Wall Street, so even Wall Street takes rests.
Speaker 1: The market is open from Mondays to Fridays, nine thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon. That's it.
Speaker 1: If a new war erupts in the Middle East, an
Speaker 1: unlikely event. But let's say a new war erupt in
Speaker 1: the Middle East. When on Friday at five minutes past four,
Speaker 1: world streets will react only on Monday morning. It is
Speaker 1: on weekend vacation. And this is actually a good thing
Speaker 1: because if you force organic entities to be on all
Speaker 1: the time, they eventually collapse and die, which is really
Speaker 1: what is happening to us as individuals and as societies.
Speaker 1: I think maybe the most misunderstood and abused word in
Speaker 1: the English language today is the word excited. People think
Speaker 1: that excited means happy, like I meet you and I say,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to meet you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what happened to us next dage Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But excited excited doesn't mean happy. Excited means that all
Speaker 1: your nervous system and your brain is like fuzzing. It's on,
Speaker 1: and it's good to be excited sometime, but if you
Speaker 1: keep an organic being, an animal excited all the time,
Speaker 1: it eventually collapses and dies.
Speaker 5: So you're saying beforehand, I should have said to meet you,
Speaker 5: I'm relaxed to meet you. I apologize, I'm dead inside.
Speaker 5: But that's not your problem.
Speaker 1: But thing, for instance, about the election cycles and US politics,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be better if it was a bit more boring.
Speaker 5: I would love it if it were boring. I would
Speaker 5: love it if it were boring. And we see what
Speaker 5: happens in Europe where it's shorter, it's boring. But everything,
Speaker 5: everything is pulling us to maximalize, right, the idea that
Speaker 5: the fact that if we had a new cycle that
Speaker 5: could end on Friday and we pick it back up
Speaker 5: on Monday would be fantastic. But it doesn't seem like
Speaker 5: the algorithms, doesn't seem like the financial benefits are pushing
Speaker 5: us in that direction at all. Where do you see
Speaker 5: a path like that going.
Speaker 1: If you keep kind of increasing the pace all the time,
Speaker 1: we can't handle it, So the algorithms can, so they
Speaker 1: take over. But it's not good news for humanity. We
Speaker 1: need to slow down, basically. And you know, we are
Speaker 1: facing now these non organic entities which work and think
Speaker 1: in a completely different way from us. And the question
Speaker 1: is who is going to adapt?
Speaker 5: To whom you're pointing at AI? Now? Is AI? Do
Speaker 5: you see it as an existential threat? Like I've seen
Speaker 5: some of these shrimp jesuses and I don't like it,
Speaker 5: these weird images that pop up online. But I don't
Speaker 5: necessarily connect that with the end of conversation.
Speaker 1: I think the most important thing to understand about AI
Speaker 1: is that AI is not a tool. It is an agent.
Speaker 1: It's the first technology in history that can make the
Speaker 1: decisions and invent new ideas by itself, Even something as
Speaker 1: powerful as the atom bomb could not decide anything by itself.
Speaker 1: All the decisions were made by humans. Now we've created
Speaker 1: something which potentially can take power away from us at present.
Speaker 1: It starts with very small things like for instance, there
Speaker 1: was an experiment when open Ai developed GPT four like
Speaker 1: two years ago. They want to test what can this
Speaker 1: thing do? So they gave it a task to solve
Speaker 1: capture puzzles. The cupture puzzles like when you go online
Speaker 1: and you want to access your bank or whatever, and
Speaker 1: they have this riddle that you have to solve. An
Speaker 1: image that you have to say, what are the twisted
Speaker 1: words and letters to make sure you are not a robot?
Speaker 5: It's tough, Yeah, is that a street line? Is that
Speaker 5: a bicycle? Will?
Speaker 8: I know?
Speaker 5: Let me do it again?
Speaker 1: Refresh and it's it's really difficult for GPT four. GPT
Speaker 1: four could not solve the capture. But what sheputy four
Speaker 1: did it access task Rabbit, which is an online site
Speaker 1: where you can hire humans to do different things for you,
Speaker 1: and it asked a human to solve the copture for it.
Speaker 1: Now the human got suspicious. The human ask, why do
Speaker 1: you need somebody to solve capture for you. Are you
Speaker 1: a robot? It asked directly, are you a robot? And
Speaker 1: GPT four answered no, I'm not a robot. I have
Speaker 1: a vision imperment, which is why I can't solve the coptuat.
Speaker 1: So I need your help.
Speaker 5: To the fully to the truly evolved human is not
Speaker 5: somebody who's smarter. It's just somebody who gets somebody else
Speaker 5: to do the work for them.
Speaker 2: Smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, scary, very scary.
Speaker 5: It's scary. You talk a little bit about Uh, there's
Speaker 5: a portionary. You talk about the artist's role in the
Speaker 5: community of whether it's comedy or writers or filmmakers. People
Speaker 5: talk about is AI coming for our jobs? Part of
Speaker 5: what you're articulate right here is that it's an artist's
Speaker 5: job to sort of paint these fears, let us understand
Speaker 5: the dynamics of human interaction. You break things down into
Speaker 5: what these social networks need. And I'm paraphrasing, but like
Speaker 5: both stories of mythology that lift us up and also
Speaker 5: articulations of the bureaucracy, bureaucross is very important. It's very important,
Speaker 5: which I think is explain that to me a little bit.
Speaker 5: But I also feel it's very difficult also for artists
Speaker 5: to articulate bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: That's the problem. We are very good at articulating mythology.
Speaker 1: We love mythological stories, and mythology is very important, but ultimately,
Speaker 1: our world, the modern world, is built on bureaucracies. And
Speaker 1: this is also where AI fits into the picture, because
Speaker 1: we are now going to see millions and millions of
Speaker 1: AI bureaucrats. The kind of existential threat we are facing
Speaker 1: is not this Hollywood scenario of a single computer trying
Speaker 1: to take over the world. It's millions of AI bureaucrats
Speaker 1: in the bank, in the governments, in the armies, in
Speaker 1: the schools making decisions about us. Like you apply to
Speaker 1: a bank to get a loan, and it's an AI
Speaker 1: bureaucrat deciding whether to give you a loan or not.
Speaker 1: You apply for the job for a place in college,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. Now. The thing with bureaucracy, it's boring.
Speaker 1: It's boring. It's very difficult for artists to write good
Speaker 1: stories about bureaucracies. But if the function of art is
Speaker 1: help us understand reality, this is much more important than
Speaker 1: telling mythological stories. And you know, when was the last
Speaker 1: time you saw a really good TV show about bureaucracy.
Speaker 5: Let's say about the budget, like I'm a twelve part
Speaker 5: series right now? Is well, I think about it. I
Speaker 5: think of like movies like The Big Short. For every
Speaker 5: the Big Short, you have a thousand Marvel movies exactly
Speaker 5: live in the world of mythology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so superheroes, this is mythology. This is no how
Speaker 1: not how the budget works. You don't have a super
Speaker 1: accountant fighting against I don't know what.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we can workshops, yeah, but you know what shapes
Speaker 9: your life is these accountants with the budgets far more
Speaker 9: than the superheroes.
Speaker 1: And it's really a challenge to do a good TV
Speaker 1: series about the budget, and even if we try, it
Speaker 1: will end up again like a love story between somebody
Speaker 1: in accounts and somebody in another department, and the budget
Speaker 1: will be pushed to the side. But we need to
Speaker 1: really understand how these things work.
Speaker 5: I think what I love about a lot of your
Speaker 5: work is it does explore the stories that we tell
Speaker 5: and how important that is to just humankind and the
Speaker 5: way that we create societies and build off one another's
Speaker 5: and the danger of not telling those stories or not
Speaker 5: bringing people in together. I think when I fear about
Speaker 5: our future and our democracies, and they are a building
Speaker 5: to hold these convers I think about things like AI,
Speaker 5: but I also very much think about these mediums that
Speaker 5: our conversations are taking place, whether it's on Twitter or
Speaker 5: cable news or TikTok like. None of these mediums are
Speaker 5: pointing towards or value any type of conversation that is
Speaker 5: helpful in a way that is beneficial. So I'm afraid
Speaker 5: of the AI in the way that we're tracking, but
Speaker 5: I don't see a platform or a place where the
Speaker 5: conversations that need to happen can happen.
Speaker 1: I think the number one question to ask to the
Speaker 1: Superbergs and the Elune Masks of the world and Softie.
Speaker 5: You have their number, I text them right now.
Speaker 1: So if you have the number of this is the question,
Speaker 1: how is it that we have the most sophisticated information
Speaker 1: technology in history and we can no longer hold the conversation,
Speaker 1: We can no longer talk with each other. That's the
Speaker 1: big question. And you see it in democracies all over
Speaker 1: the world. You see it here in the US, you
Speaker 1: see it in my home country in Israel, you see
Speaker 1: it in Brazil, in the Philippines, in France. The conversation
Speaker 1: is breaking down. So what is happening this extremely sophisticated
Speaker 1: information technology. It is not helping the conversation, It is destroying.
Speaker 5: It one hundred percent. I talk to older people on
Speaker 5: the road who go to people at rallies, at Marga
Speaker 5: rallies who will go to Facebook as a place to
Speaker 5: converse with friends. And frankly, if you're in your sixties,
Speaker 5: that's the place to talk to friends, to connect. But
Speaker 5: in order to be a person on Facebook, not enough
Speaker 5: for you just to converse with the friends you have there.
Speaker 5: You have to publish news sources to get people to
Speaker 5: pay attention to you. And I feel like the Zuckerberg's
Speaker 5: and the facebooks and these media sites that we have
Speaker 5: right now. We promise this idea of conversation or that
Speaker 5: you can connect with friends, but we ask people to
Speaker 5: be publishers of ideas and stories and promoters of things
Speaker 5: that are outside the realm of what makes a healthy conversation,
Speaker 5: and more so, money up the ability to have that
Speaker 5: honest conversation.
Speaker 1: Traditionally, and we've been in this place every time a
Speaker 1: new information technology was invented, we faced the same difficulties.
Speaker 1: For instance, when the printing revolution swept Europe in the
Speaker 1: early modern period. It did not lead directly, as many
Speaker 1: people think, to the scientific Revolution. The best sellers of
Speaker 1: the early print era were not Scoopernicus and Galileo, Galilee
Speaker 1: and Newton. Hardly anybody read those books. The big best
Speaker 1: sellers were religious tracts and were witch hunting manuals. The
Speaker 1: big witch hunts. They were not a medieval phenomena. Medieval
Speaker 1: people didn't care very much about witches. The really big
Speaker 1: witch hunts they began after the print Revolution. One of
Speaker 1: the biggest best sellers was a book called The Hammer
Speaker 1: of the Witches, which was a do it yourself manual
Speaker 1: to identifying and killing witches, Hammer The Hammer of the Witches,
Speaker 1: and it was full of these stories about cannibalistic ogis
Speaker 1: and goather rings of and this was far more interesting
Speaker 1: than Copernicus with own mathematics.
Speaker 5: I gotta say, I'm writing a Hammer of the Witches
Speaker 5: that sounds good. Hammer of the Witch is also my
Speaker 5: favorite led Zeppelin album.
Speaker 1: For instance, if you want to really understand, like Qannon today,
Speaker 1: it's basically the same story. There is a conspiracy of
Speaker 1: Satan worshiping witches. That is trying to destroy the world,
Speaker 1: and good Christians need the ability to identify and destroy
Speaker 1: these witches. It's not a new thing on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: It goes back to the print revolution in the fifteenth
Speaker 1: and sixteenth century.
Speaker 5: Are there any examples looking back at history though, where
Speaker 5: we face these technological watershed moments where we are given
Speaker 5: new techno and that humanity has decided to revert and
Speaker 5: say no to it and move beyond it. It feels
Speaker 5: like a foregone conclusion that we are heading into this
Speaker 5: Ai revolution and we're not writing the rules. A couple
Speaker 5: of rich folks Intelicon Valley are.
Speaker 1: You can't go back in history, That's impossible. But the
Speaker 1: answer is always the same. You need institutions. You know, institutions.
Speaker 1: They are not heroic, they are not superheroes. They don't
Speaker 1: they are not kind of the main theme of Marvel movies.
Speaker 1: But they are always people reach the conclusion. They are
Speaker 1: the answer because if you want to you know, in
Speaker 1: the ocean of fake and junk information, if you want
Speaker 1: to know the truth, you need institutions like newspapers, like
Speaker 1: academic associations, like quotes that develop mechanisms to sift through
Speaker 1: the evidence and decide what is reliable information and what
Speaker 1: is unreliable? Again, it's not heroic, but this is always
Speaker 1: the answer, and we need to do it again with
Speaker 1: the current information revolution.
Speaker 5: So as long as as newspapers stay strong as a
Speaker 5: business model, perhaps v HS machines can get in there
Speaker 5: too and fight the good fight. You know, you actually you.
Speaker 5: You signed a book for me backstage, and one of
Speaker 5: the comments you made with in it was to not
Speaker 5: lose hope. Help me, help me do that. Where where
Speaker 5: do you where do you see those little those little
Speaker 5: glimmers of hope when you look at this this uncertain
Speaker 5: and perhaps scary future that we're walking into.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that AI is nowhere near its
Speaker 1: full potential, But humans also, we are nowhere near our
Speaker 1: full potential. If we if for every dollar and every
Speaker 1: minute that we invest in developing artificial intelligence, we also
Speaker 1: invest in exploring and developing our own minds, we will
Speaker 1: be okay. But if we put on our bets on
Speaker 1: the technology on the AIS and neglect to develop ourselves,
Speaker 1: this is very bad news for you. Monity.
Speaker 5: All right, So I'm gonna get that gym membership and
Speaker 5: I'm gonna cut out. I'm gonna cut out. The Swedes
Speaker 5: Nexus is available. Now you've all Noah harrara, I'm gonna take.
Speaker 2: A quick break, all right back after that.
Speaker 5: That's our sol for tonight, but he sat to tune
Speaker 5: tomorrow when John Stewart hosts our live debate coverage on
Speaker 5: a Love It PI.
Speaker 10: Kamala Harris, the Vice President, has been in a hotel
Speaker 10: for a few days, really hunkering down and trying to
Speaker 10: prep to get ready to take on Donald Trump on
Speaker 10: the debate stage on Tuesday.
Speaker 5: She basically said, it's.
Speaker 10: Like cramming for finals right where you can't wait to
Speaker 10: get out, and the getting out part was the best part.
Speaker 2: Watch being at the spice store.
Speaker 5: I finally got debate prep to look at these spices
Speaker 5: best part to make Fred so far.
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Speaker 2: searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch
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