Leighton Smith Podcast #323 - April 8th 2026 - George Friedman

George Friedman, from Geopolitical Futures guested on Podcast 318, five weeks ago.

As the Iran war has developed into a longer and much more serious event, it was appropriate to muster his knowledge and expertise for an update.

Knowing that there were threats for ever greater expansion of the conflict, we endeavoured to cover different results for each possibility.

We take a look at energy shortage and policy failure, and critique AI.

And we visit The Mailroom with Mrs Producer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talks It b
follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Of the sis, now.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
The Layton Smith podcast cowered by news talks.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
It be.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
Welcome to podcast three hundred and twenty three for April eight,
twenty twenty six.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Well, what a morning.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
It's been sitting around waiting, watching, listening to procedures until
eight pm American time, which is midday our time, to
find out what the result of the negotiations, the latest
negotiations have been, and whether whether there will be an
all out blitzkrieg or whether there will be some sort

(00:54):
of deal that has been arranged. Now at this point
it seems that that's the case. That things are yet
to be sorted out in the final detail. But at
the moment, there is a two week cancellation. You'll know
by now, of course, but a two week cancelation of
bombing by both parties, the Iranians, Americans and the Israelis. Now,

(01:16):
whether or not it can even get through the two
weeks period remains vital, and I have some doubt as
to whether it will go smoothly now. It was only
four maybe five weeks ago that George Friedman guested on
the podcast and talked about the war then in its
early days. But something happened the day that I was

(01:37):
going to record an interview with another party, and they
had to pull out the very last second. They got
struck down with something rather sickening, and it was not
their fault. So in considering who I could replace them with,
I decided that the war was at a stage which
had advanced considerably from when I spoke with George to

(01:59):
a position where this would be a very good replacement.
And so we recorded that yesterday, which was Tuesday. And
we knew, of course at the time that things might
change between when we ended that interview and when we
put it into the podcast, and that happened, So keep

(02:19):
that in mind as you listen to the interview. But
I'd say this that it was a very good one, sir,
as I'm concerned. And there were a couple of things
that I asked George that I hadn't thought of before,
neither had anybody else. I think that we're worthy of
asking and the and the response is worthy of hearing.
But before we get there, I want to quote you

(02:41):
something fairly short from an Australian journalist, from an Australian journalist,
Chris Ullman, who you've possibly seen on Sky News Australia
on a frequent basis. But he wrote something to do
with the situation we find ourselves in, and I would

(03:04):
think that many of you had thoughts along the same lines.
But anyway, he is his We were warned is the title,
and he sets it up this way. In February of
nineteen seventy seven, the new economics teacher at Marist College
in Canberra decided to make a dramatic entry. He strode
into the fifth form classroom, picked up the chalk and

(03:26):
scrawled one word in capitals across the top of the board, stagflation.
He underlined it and turned to explain this was a
new economic concept designed to describe our times when high
inflation and high unemployment collided. The word was an inelegant
blend of stagnation and inflation, as it was a child

(03:48):
of the seventies oil shocks. Why because oil was not
just another commodity, It was the master resource that made
and moved economies. When the flow of oil was constricted,
The price surged and raised the cost of almost everything
at once, transport, manufacturing, farming, plastics, Food prices rose everywhere

(04:12):
because the cost of the lifeblood of the modern world
had spiked, and the shock ran down every artery in vain,
not in vain and vain. The constriction of oil supply
also slowed the world's heartbeat. Households had less money to
spend after filling the car and paying the bills. Businesses

(04:33):
faced rising costs, shrinking margins, and weaker demand. Investments stalled,
production slowed, and jobs were lost. Economists had long assumed
there was a trade off between inflation and unemployment, captured
in a neat model called the Phillips curve. The oil
crisis delivered both together. Gross weakened, unemployment rose, and inflation surged.

(04:58):
The real world broke the model, as it so often
does now, with the Third Gulf War raging. Everything old
is new again, as the song has it, and a
word not discussed outside universities in nearly a half century
is coming back into vogue. The threat is real. The

(05:18):
toxic cocktail that could breathe stagflation back into being is
being mixed again now that's all I'm going to quote,
because it covers some Australian politics from there on end, basically,
But the point being that we were warned, and I
think that it's worthy of noting that we were warned

(05:41):
a second time, if you like, not just bag in
the seventies, but in the two thousands of the twenty
and twenties, when COVID hit and we were restricted in
drugs and what have you, that we couldn't get our
hands on because the supply chains were killed off in
some cases and slower in others. So we didn't learn

(06:03):
anything from the first one, and I don't believe we've
learned anything from the second. I remember arguing with a
couple of people that this is something that we should
be paying a great deal of heed to and one
way or the other, there should be manufacturing of regular
drugs in particular, but all drugs, if possible, into this

(06:27):
country's production lines. Do you think we'll learn this time?
Breathe deeply and say I doubt it now in a moment.
George Friedman, lat and Smith. Buccerlan is a natural oral
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(06:50):
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Protection becomes effective a few days after you take buccolin

(07:10):
and lasts for up to three months following the three
day course. Buccolin can be taken throughout the cold season,
over winter or all the year round. And remember Buckelan
is not intended as an alternative to influenza vaccination, but
may be used along with the flu vaccination for added protection.
And keep in mind that millions of doses have been
taken by Kiwi's for over fifty years. Only available from

(07:33):
your pharmacist. Always read the label and users directed, and
see your doctor if systems persist. Farmer Broker Auckland Layton
Smith George Reeman is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

(07:54):
We have spoken with him fairly recently actually, but as
things change and change in what appears to be a
very dramatic scenario. It was time to upgrade and to
find out what George thoughts are on the situation right
at this moment, appreciate your time, happy to be here.
How would you describe the feeling? You can range us

(08:17):
why did you like with the answer to this, But
how would you describe the feeling the attitude in America
at the moment?

Speaker 2 (08:23):
I'm the whole The Americans don't like the war, but
there's not an intensity that's dislike. So it's on the
level of the Vietnam War and the anti war movement
and generally. But on the other hand, this goes from
left to right in opposing vise. So at this point,
if we come out in the next few days weeks

(08:46):
and withdraw, all things will be right. I can see
great intensity anny war intensity. If this goes out longer.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
I want to quote you something from an article, from
a comment. What's more treacherous and treasonous than wishing your
own country gets defeated in war, especially by a bunch
of goat molesting seventh century pagan savage whose primitive mindset
is matched only by their grotesque perversions. Well, the discussing perversions.

(09:15):
Part is merely a collateral reason why members of America's
Donkey Party seem to have such affinity for Iran's rulers.
The Mullers, with their bizarre bestiality and grotesque handmaiden dogma,
and the San Francisco Democrats with their furry friendly gender
spaz grossness collectively share the worst figurative collective browser in

(09:38):
the history of ever.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Does that offend you?

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Do it offend? These got true? One? The right wing
is at least it's intensely opposed to the war. Trump
ran president promising not to enter the kind of endless
wars that the Democrats had undertaken. Now this war is
that he entered it. There was substantial opposition from the

(10:05):
left from the right on this, just on the left
and on the left there are some who are sympathetic.
So to turn this in left right matter. This is
a general feeling in the United States, intensely felt by
many of the rights that he's betrayed.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh that you've gone.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, what I said was, this is far from a
left wing opposition to the war. Trump was elected by
his supporters in large parts because he promised not to
get the war, involved in a war like the Democrats
had these endless wars and I've got Astad, Iraq and
so on. So that he's engaged in this war is

(10:49):
looked at very, very painfully by his supporters. They have
not yet become radically opposed to Trump, but there's a
great feeling of betrayal on the right, and so those
supporting the war are down about twenty percent in the
latest poll I've seen twenty percent of the United States,

(11:10):
and that means a lot of his supporters opposed to
it as well.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
I've heard many times conversations are because conversations now are endless.
Many times, shall we say, explanations or comments like well,
you have to wait and see the outcome. If it
sort of works out well and he can stand up
and say I did this, then everything will be sweet.

(11:37):
But if it goes the other way, then of course
it's another story altogether.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Well, that's always the case in war. We've been in
this war for about four or five weeks. American casualties
have been relatively low, very low in fact, so we
don't yet have an anti war movement. The Democrats are
always approppalled by the president as the Republicans would be
about Democrats, but in this particular case, on this particular issue,

(12:05):
he's got a lot of opposition from the right as well.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
By the same taken, there's some support.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
From the left, there's some there's some limited support, particularly
those on the left who are sympathetic to Israel. So
there's that aspect of that too. And there are many
in America apart from Jews, that are sympathetic to Israel.
So it's a complex matter. But on the whole the country,

(12:31):
the Poles are very negative in this war. Only about
twenty twenty five percent of people on the polls that
I've seen support the war. The others are not even neutral.
They're a hostile to it, not yet Passionately.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
I'm interested to know your thoughts on fuel, as in petrol,
the headlines seem to be saying, well, on television, they're
constantly talking about the price and how it's going up
and up and up, whereas I thought you were getting
the country was getting fueled in from Venezuela, and the

(13:07):
President and has been saying that we don't use the
petrol that comes over whatever comes out of the Middle East,
and therefore we're not affected by it. Why is the
price still going up almost on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Because we are affected by it. We're affected by it
because it's not true that we produce all the oil
that we need. We also sell a great deal of
oil overseas, supplementing it by purchases from less costly sources.
And therefore the price of oil is clearly rising. It's
not yet at emergency level in the United States, but

(13:45):
it's quite painful.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Especially if you've got to be So let's talk about
the prospect of what's going to happen at this point.
The promise has been made to obliterate Iran unless Iran
does what it's told to do, and that doesn't appear
to be happening. So that leads leads me to a
fork in the road with question where does would you

(14:11):
say that the resilience that the hows that be in
Iran is showing that that resilience is real or is
it or is it just simply the best they can do?

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Well, I really think we should start, if you don't mind,
with why the war began, and because that's how we
judge how it's going and how the size are. The
war began because the United States and Israel had a
profound fear of a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran.

(14:46):
The US demanded the the Iranians and their nuclear program.
The Iranians, you refused to do so. Now you have
to remember from the American side that groups like al
Qaeda that engineer at nine to eleven have found a
safety in Iran. They're supported by them as well as
other Islamist groups. The through fear here, to some extent,

(15:11):
is a nuclear nine to eleven in which a nuclear
weapon would be placed on a ship flying some flag
of some country, sailed into New York Harbor and blew up.
From the Israeli point of view, the fear is that
their nuclear weapon, the nuclear weapon aimed at Israel, would
be launched from the missiles that we see they have
a great deal of. So the fundamental issue here on

(15:34):
this side Sheriby to Israel and the United States is
a fear of what Iran, a country that harbors al
Qaeda and other groups that do such things, what the
fear that they would do it. The demand was that
they stopped the program. When they refused to stop the
program that started the war. So this was not simply

(15:57):
an irrational moment in Trump's mind or something like that.
It was a fundamental principle of the United States that
no entity close to al Qaeda should have a nuclear weapon.
They refused, and this began. The success will be based
on whether or not we destroy the nuclear weapons, whether

(16:18):
or not Iran gets rid of Alcada, and so on.
But this is in the United States. Nine to eleven
was a profound event. And while many people remember nine
to eleven, many don't draw the conclusions of why Trump
was obsessed with the nuclear weapons. And this could would
not have happened if the Iranians had chosen to end

(16:40):
the nuclear program. As you remember, we bombed their nuclear
capability once but failed to take out all of it.
So after a while, this was the reason. Now you
could argue there's a good reason or a bad reason,
but you must understand the reason this war is being faced.

Speaker 4 (16:56):
Okay, so right on. So you've just explained it very well.
But it would appear to me that there are many
people all over the world, but as we're talking about
your place in America who don't grasp what you've just explained,

(17:17):
don't understand it, don't care about it even uh, and
they're the ones that are that are opposing the activities
that continue.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Indeed, and there's opposition to war. If the war ends
in a few weeks or months successfully, that'll be in
a year or six months forgotten. If, on the other hand,
they don't succeed in what the mission was and continue
the war for an extended period of time, that's significant

(17:47):
consequences politically. But I think at this moment the question
of the view in the United States is the majority
oppose it, but there is not a great intensity as
there was during the Vietnam War about that. As the
war carries on and this doesn't stop, the intensity will increase.

(18:08):
So that's just how people say to polsters what they
like it or not. It's how intensely they feel, and
that intensity is there in some quarters but not many others.

Speaker 4 (18:17):
Yet can't let that go just at the moment, the
fact that so many people don't grasp the background to
this and where it would likely head.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Why is it they don't do that? Do you blame?

Speaker 4 (18:35):
Is the media responsible? Because I would suggest that it
has a lot to do with it that they do
not pursue the detail and the facts that you have outlined,
and that most people with any sort of inquiring mind
would understand.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Well, the media is a vast swamp of many things,
including myself, and certainly we were talking about a nuclear
nine to eleven as the motivation. Trump spoke widely about
the nuclear fear, but it did not explain that he
was afraid of a nuclear nine to eleven. I think

(19:11):
that was because he didn't want to get anxiety raised
too high. I don't know why else he would do that,
but he has not. He's failed to explain the reasons
why the war had to be waged, even though he
continually said there would not be a war if they
got rid of in a nuclear capability. And somehow he

(19:33):
couldn't get it across to the public. Whenever a president
fails to get it across the public. I blamed the president,
not the media. How would you suggest then he do that? Well,
he should have said bluntly, what could have happened? It
was clear to me and to my team that the
fear was in nuclear nine to eleven. He should have

(19:53):
mentioned that. He should have mentioned that al Qaeda is
in Iran and operating in Iran, and that this was
the group that caused nine to eleven in the first place,
and Iran is a country that would give them a sanctuary,
but he didn't do that. He simply spoke of the
nuclear threat that he wasn't willing to let them have that.

(20:14):
So I think the failure there was Trump not being
forthright in what he was afraid of if he was
afraid of that, but I think he was, and why
everybody should be concerned that this country had the nuclear weapons.
He didn't do a good job.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
The Iranians have been launching very recently, charrently even currently
have they been launching missiles into Israel, Haifa being being
the latest ah and that has appeared in this part
of the world to be escalating badly.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, the war is kind of static. It's been running
for out a month. The Iranians are still sending missiles
into not just their Israel, but the Arab country as well,
and the Persian Gulf, also to Saudi Arabian and so on.
It several to Turkey. So this is not just a

(21:11):
lashing out at Israel. They're lashing out all over. But
at the same time, the number of missiles they're launching
each day has decreased substantially. This could either be because
they're running out of drones and missiles, or they're holding
back of supply in case they need more. But the

(21:31):
tempo of operations of the Iranians has declined significantly, but
not yet to the point that it's not terrifying.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
We talk about the Iranians, Let's just back up a bit,
because the military is one thing. I know, there's two
parts of the military. You explained that last time, but
that is the that is the driving factor of of
of the I'll see we say the bad team. Then

(22:02):
then there then there are divisions in the makeup of
Iran as far as shall we say racial background is concerned.
Where does the stubbornness start and finish with which groups?

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Well, I mean the most important group is moralcol the
Islamist Republican Guard a crow corps, which is an ideological corps,
a deeply Islamist corps, and that is the most powerful
one in the country. Interestingly, there's another army there, the Irish,

(22:43):
which is not Islamist, which is larger than the IRGC,
and many think of it as more powerful, which is
the legacy of the Shah's regime. It remained intact. Its
primary goal is military to defend the country, but not
Islamist in nature. So there are two forces, the first

(23:03):
being very active and practically speaking in control of the
nation at this point out of the war, there's an
other significant force that's actually larger than the RGC by
someone that has been outside of it. Now that army
has not been bombed by the Americans at all, except
for a couple of drone targetings. Other than that, what

(23:28):
is simply a situation in which this war is more
complex than the media represents, because there are some tensions
merging inside of Iran as well as in the United States.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
So the prospect of hitting Iran, as the President has
promised on a number of occasions, the prospect of hitting
their infrastructure in the next twenty four hours or so
desalination plants, energy facilities, etc. Is a that likely to happen,

(24:02):
and b if it does or doesn't, is it a
wise thing to be promoting?

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Well, we're in a war. The war began with the
idea that we would destroy the government of Iran, and
we did kill Romeni and all the others. It turns
out that they were not really the government of Iran.
The true government of Iran, who's controlling things was the RGC.

(24:30):
The rc is deployed all over the country. It has
a central command. But if that central command were destroyed,
it's built and called mosaic basis, in which each regional
force is autonous and able to operate. Therefore, this is
a very sophisticated enemy. It was assumed that if we

(24:51):
destroyed the government itself, but I don't know why Trump
thought this was the governing force in Iran. I would
wonder what kind of intelligence he was being given, if
he paid attention to it or not. But taking out
the government itself have no real impact on the power.
So now the question is what can be done against

(25:13):
the RGC. Landing forces against them is going to be
very costly in terms of life and take quite a
while because this is a vast country. On the other hand,
threatening to destroy the physical infrastructure, I don't think we'll
compel the RGC to give up. These are true believers.
So the United States at this point is in a

(25:34):
difficult position. It either goes forward and tries to devastate
the country from the air. I don't think that will
necessarily cause the RGC the pain that it intended to you.
But what it's trying to do is negotiate and understanding.
Trump has continued they've been talking about understanding forthcoming. And

(25:56):
in fact, there is a process of negotiation going on
with people in Pakistan, the Egyptians, the Saudis, and so forth,
and also the Chinese who appear to be wanting the
war to end, negotiating on the part of both the
United States and indirectly therefore with Iraq as well. So

(26:20):
the real issue here is can there be a negotiated settlement,
how much pain can be inflicted and around to force
them to do that, and how much pain will the
United States take? So we're in that kind of situation.
But there are talks going on, not directly but indirectly
between the Pakistani coalition that's formed there and the United States.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
It's occurred to me more than once over the course
of this event that the American president or administration if
you like, but particularly the president is handicapped as opposed
to the administration of well, in this case, Iran. And
what I mean by that is, if you're a tyrant,

(27:07):
or you're you have a governing tyranny, then you make
the choices yourself and you go and do it. You
don't have to consult people, you don't have to ask
their permission, you don't have to fight them in congress
and have your activities interfered with and your progress delayed.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (27:25):
Do you think a big handicap? And I'm talking here
really democracy versus tyranny when it comes to this situation, Well,
the tyrants can be killed too.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
So there are many tyrants that started wars and they
failed and faced and uprising in the coming because people
who see their children dying in war become angry, and
it's possible that they have more power. But the essential
issue of war is not intention. Once they're at war,

(28:01):
there's only one intention, victory, And the question is capability.
What force does each side have? How much can that
force be protected and directed against the enemy. So before
we talk about public opinion, when war is launched at
this point, it reaches this point, it's really a question

(28:23):
of the power military power of each side.

Speaker 4 (28:25):
Except that the election the midterms is playing a pretty
big part in decision making, is it not.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Apparently not, because the president has chosen to do something
that is deeply unpopular in the country. If the election
were held at this point, I think he would be
devastated in the midterm election. So unless he's not thinking clearly,
which I'm not sure that's true, he's just not worrying

(28:53):
about that because he expects this to happen, or like
a good president, he puts the national interest ahead of
electoral victory. Either way you look at it, that's not
the issue at this point.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
I think in America at the moment is being affected
very much.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Well physically, I mean, aside from a somewhat raised price
of gasoline, and well, that was a different issue that
had nothing to do with the war. Their travel issue
had to do with the government's policy. And this includes
the Congress on voting for certain issues in the United

(29:37):
States having to do with inerdal politics. So when you
look at that, the air travels situation had nothing to
do with the war. It was happening long before it.
So now the war is the overriding issue in the
United States at this point, along with the economic consequences
of the war and the fundamental question of does Trump

(30:01):
know what he's doing and so on and so forth.
His enemies will say no, many of his supporters will
now say I don't understand what he's doing. I don't
like it. But if he wins the war, he comes
out of hero. If that's the question.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Let me extend this conversation a little further. There is
something riding on the outcome of this that is most
important as far as the president is concerned, and that
is that if he loses the midterm election, he is
likely to be prosecuted again and again and again in
the in the in the House, and chase down. He

(30:41):
will become, as they say, a lame duck. He'll be
He'll become a lame duck president. Now I find that
difficult to comprehend. With the character of the individual involved.
I'm sure that he would be working very hard come
the time too, shall we say, evade whatever might be

(31:03):
put in his way. But nevertheless, that's not the point.
The point is that that's what people would expect. That's
what everyone expects, because that's the way it's always been.
What first first question, though, is what influence do you
think that might be having on him? And if it's
not now, then it's got to start sometime in the
not too distant future.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Well, of course he's a politician and he's thinking about
the elections. But apparently since he's not stupid, and he
knew that many in his own party oppose this war,
but he launched it anyway. He was expecting the war
to be relatively easy to win. Now, bear in mind

(31:47):
has been gone off only a month, really, and that's
not very long in terms of wars. If he's successful
in this in the next few months, he might do
very well in the election. If he doesn't, he's going
to be in very bad shape. Either way. This is
not would not be considered an impeachable offense. So when

(32:08):
you talk about this, it's not like the parliamentary systems
where they could haven't photo no confidence. They have to
find him guilty of some sort of not mismanagement, but
some sort of crime. So that doesn't happen very often
in the United States. And you can bring those charges,
but you don't usually win them. So unless it's something

(32:32):
else happens, unless there's a catastrophic failure in the war
that costs many lives, and so on and so forth. Well,
even if the Democrats had a majority, he would still
be president.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Where do you think the limit would be in bombing
in bombing Tehran? Keeping in mind that there are lots
and lots of people in Tehran, Who and surrounding areas.
Who would be wanting the downfall of the president administration
and the victory of the Americans in israelis.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
We know that.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
Where do you think the bombing becomes unacceptable?

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Well, in many ways it has already been unacceptable. But
the nature of the American political system is the president,
unless Congress intervenes, is not subject to passing fads or
viewishes or anything else. The issue here is how does
the war end? It is particularly a military question. If

(33:36):
he succeeds in what he's doing and destroys the capability
of Iran to launch in nuclear weapons or other capabilities,
he'll come out a hero. If that doesn't happen, or
if it happens at a huge cost in American lives,
it comes out a different way. But we're way away

(33:57):
from that election that's going to be in October. He
it's not going to happen very soon. So right now
the focus has to be on not the political consequences
because we don't because we won't know any of those
consequences until we know how this war ends. If it does,
and if it doesn't, then he will have a great

(34:20):
deal to answer for it. So he has an interest
to this point in continuing the war as quickly as
possible defeating the Iranians. At the same time, what his
political imperative is and what his military capabilities are maybe
two very different things. But at this point thinking about

(34:43):
the fallout is not yet relevant in this sense that
we don't know how the war will evolve and therefore
we can't predict what the fallout will be.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
Now, something else there is. There's been plenty of talk
in the last few days about where things are at,
and there was a request made supposedly for a temporary
cease fire for I think forty days or something, but
they doesn't seem to be agreement on which side it

(35:14):
was making that. Was it the Iranians or was it
the Americans.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Well, frankly, I hadn't heard about the fourteen days. There's
been discussion about a ceasefire. The Iranians refused to have
a seafire because they were afraid the US built up
its force. This really is a question in this war
of a total settlement, which the Pakistanis are leading and

(35:39):
trying to achieve, and you know, so the continuation of war.
I think this war has to continue until one side
of the other is militarily incapable of carrying it out.
That could happen to the United States because it does
not want to and really doesn't have the ability to

(36:00):
enter on the ground and engage the Irgc and hand
to hand combat. If that doesn't work with our air
attacks and so on and so forth, we might reach
that point. For the Iranians. It's not clear how long
the Iranian public can live with what's being done. We
know that the Iranian public rose up against the Shah of Iran.

(36:22):
We know on several occasions they had risen up against
this regime. Even before the war. There were giant demonstrations
against the regime in Iran. And one of the things
that Trump was calling for before the war even gan
is to rise up and overthrow your regime. So that
became unnecessary. So at this point we are to that

(36:47):
point in the war. We have not yet fully defined
what it is about and what it's for. We do
not know completely where the United States would give up
or where the Iranians would give up, And it's quite
possible that there will be a negotiated settlement because neither
side wants to continue it. I frankly think that what's
going on inside of package stand at this point with

(37:09):
the presidence of representatives from other countries, including China, and
China has not been very supportive of a side verbally
of Iran, and I think China really wants to have
a settlement on this war because during the war the
Chinese Vice minister from the American Secretary of Treasury met

(37:32):
to discuss the upcoming Trump GI meeting, which has been
postponed on May. But I think the Chinese want that
understanding and they wanted me understanding with the United States.
So that's another complicating issue.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
By the way, the.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Best thing that's happened most recently, of course, is the
rescue of the second airman, the second flyer that's being
praised the length of the length of the world really
on how just how great it was. How would you
write that out of ten or one hundred as.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
A feat.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Beyond any numbers I could give. It was a superb action.
It was superb in that he survived, he was wounded,
he was able to climb really high peak to find safety.
We knew where he was through technological means. We launched

(38:33):
two very large planes. He won thirties and rushed with runways.
One of them was left behind and blown up. So
it was a superb operation militarily. The tragedy the joy
is that he's safe. The tragedy is that it doesn't

(38:53):
mean anything in terms of the war. So we look
at this and it certainly is a triumph of the
US military, not necessarily if Trump himself. But the war
goes on.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Yeah, you say, it doesn't do it any thing was
re out of the war. But it does.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
It would inspire a raise in a rise in spirit,
would it not them, in both the military and in
the community.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Well, the military did too sophisticated to take this as
It's a wonderful action by in and of itself, but
the military problem is far from solved. As for the public,
it was a superb action. Trump is not getting credit
for it. The military is, the CIA is. So in

(39:42):
other words, it's a wonderful episode and will be remembered
when we tell the story of this war, but it's
not a pivotal event. It doesn't change anything.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
So the one thing we haven't really mentioned, apart from Haipher,
is a scenario in Israel.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
At this point.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
Whatever information you might have or knowledge you might have
how would you say they're coping and I'm talking about
I'm talking about the population specific.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, the population is coping. The Israeli population consists of
many retired soldiers, is a military country, and they have
had many attacks in many ways. Hamas attack killed thousands.
So they are not prepared to capitulate on this because
they see a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran

(40:32):
as an existential threat to Israel, and it might well be. Therefore,
they're prepared for the war much better than for a peace.
A peace with nuclear weapons in the hands of Iranians
will be terrifying to the Israelis. So I don't think
there's any opposition really in Israel to the war made

(40:52):
to this house happening. So that's a very different case.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
Okay, So let me go just in a slightly different direction.
The other day there was news on the war, of course,
but in much of the world is based on like
a sea, there was more attention being paid to the
president's language than anything else for a period of time.

(41:18):
It was simply a statement opened the iffing straight. Well,
I think I can get your reaction to it, and
it will fall in line. Was with a lot of
others but nevertheless, I just wonder if there might have
been some negativity.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Not much. The most of it is his claims about
doing superbly well, about having the situation well in hand,
going along with various statements that the world has never
seen such successes, not just in this war but elsewhere.
That's undermining him. He's constantly praising himself, and that he

(41:59):
used the F word. It doesn't shock me very much.
What shocks me is the claims he makes about how
well he's doing, that this is the greatest economy economic
development we've ever seen, that this is the greatest outcome
of the war that's going to happen, and everything. His
superlatives about his actions are much more undermining him than

(42:23):
whether he curses or not.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
I think, well, he always has to some degree anyway,
used show we sye colorful language.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
So I would add to that that I lived for
a long while in my childhood about fifteen miles away
from where he grew up. He was in the rich part,
I was in a poorer part. But we all spoke
about the same way. So using those terms don't shock
me because where I come from is where he came from.

(42:52):
But I can imagine man that in other areas of
the country that were supporting him, they'd be troubled by it.
But I think, and I want to repeat, what is
more troubling is the things he says, claiming successes that
are extraordinary and says never happened before in history, where
people do know what happened before in history? And wasn't

(43:13):
I successful?

Speaker 4 (43:14):
All right, So there's one other thing I want to
touch on, but before then, just give me your thought
on how this how long this might go on? And
I mean, I know this is a difficult question, but
how long it might go on and how it might end?

Speaker 2 (43:30):
In your opera, one question is how many drones and
how many missiles do the Iranians still have. The number
these missiles and drones has significantly declined by some numbers,
by ninety percent. I think that's pretty close to it.

(43:53):
That may be that they're running out of them, or
they may be hoarding them for later on. So the
most important question on how this war ends, since this
war is about drones and missiles, not about infantry and
so on, is how long do the Iranians have the
ability to continue fighting at this rate? If the Iranians

(44:13):
don't have the ability to keep up the attacks, and
so on and so forth. The war may surprisingly end
with a collapse of the I R. Do you see
the Arteese the other army moving and take taking over.
In many ways, the fundamental question is how long can
the Iranians fight. The Americans can produce these things much

(44:38):
more rapidly that I assume the Uranians can so. In
terms of the question of the war, the question really
is can the United States overwhelm Iranians forces over the
next few months and shatter their ability to resist. Then
if that case, that or will end very quickly. If

(45:00):
it turns out the Iranians have better productive capabilities than
I think they have. And if it turns out the
Iranians are simply holding in the back, this war goes
on a long time. But I do believe that the
negotiations that are taking place in Pakistan, where countries like
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, well and Muslim countries are gathered

(45:25):
trying to make a peace, now joined by the Chinese,
I think that has a greater hope. If the Iranians
are weakening in terms of their ability to conduct the war,
the biggest inclination would be to protect the regime, p
T the RGC, and to make a peace. But I
don't know if the decline in weaponry shows the decline

(45:49):
in capability. If it does, we may come out of
this war with a nicely negotiated settlement. If it doesn't,
if it will continue for an extended period of time,
then the Americans have a great deal of difficulty Trump
in particular because he promises not to get into extended wars.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
I suppose it's in one respect, it's a form of entertainment. Well,
not a polite way to put it, but I mean,
everybody's turning on the televisions at news time, you know whatever,
because because they need to know, they want to know
what's going on, what the lightest.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Remember in the United States, many of our kids are
in the military. So my own life, my son was
in the Air Force, my daughter was in the Army,
and there is an intimate relationship. In the United States,
not rare to have families that have children in the military,

(46:47):
and so that becomes a very personal thing from the
military point of view. Those people who share that cultural
dimension understand that the children are going to harm's way,
but they are appalled the thought of being wasted. So
this is one of the boundaries that you have to understand.

(47:09):
So there are those whose children have not yet gone
to war. We have not committed troops, who might be
appalled if we did. But if the war wears on
and the casualties mount for the Americans and it's not
there yet, there's something called the Dover aspect of war.
Dover is the air force base where people who are

(47:30):
killed or wounded in combat. That's where the aircraft land,
and the President's stormy to go out to greet them,
and so on. The Dover effect has a greater effect
on the United States than what the rest of the
world thinks. Would the Iranians threatened and so on. If
that Dover effect, that mounting casualties which have not happened yet,

(47:52):
mounting deaths which really have not happened yet. If that
starts to mount, that's where the problem is. And so
a lot of US Americans are sitting here wondering where
our children will be. My children are out of the
military at this point, my grandchildren, may I wind up
out of it. That's the point we're in the United States.
It becomes really dangerous if we feel in the United

(48:15):
States that we're wasting American lives without a hope of winning,
just to keep the president claiming some sort of successes.
He's he's finished. But on the other hand, that hasn't
happen yet, and letsovid doesn't.

Speaker 4 (48:30):
So one last thing a different a different matter altogether,
but it's but it's an interesting one, I think, and
it's constitutional birth the citizenship. The Supreme Court was sitting
on this case and as far as I'm aware, has
not has not issued any any commentary on it. But
a lot of assumption is being made that the supposed

(48:56):
conservatives on the on the bench are likely to well rejected. Uh,
and that's having a child born in in in America
by a visitor will be retained until maybe there is
the twenty eighth Amendment.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Well, it would take an amendments of the Constitution, which
is a very difficult thing to do because the Constitution
says that anyone born in the United States under any circumstance,
unless the visitor is an official or foreign government, is
then a citizen of the United States. And this has
been backed up by juries for centuries. Now at this point,

(49:40):
the Trump administration wants that's thrown out to redefined rejected.
A bit too much is made about the conservative liberals
split on the book on there. We've had some cases
in which they were very unanimous, and the conservatives on

(50:01):
the book on the Supreme Court believe in the principle
of originalism. Where is what did the founders mean when
they said that? And the fact is that it's very
clear what the founders meant. They meant that if you
were born in the United States to something other than
the foreign minister or something like that, you're an American citizen.

(50:27):
I think the Conservatives will likely go with that because
we're violating their basic principle of virsionalism.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
And yet there is there is I can't go into
it now, but there is some shall we say, logical
arguments that that wasn't retained.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Well, there are some logical arguments on everything. But Supreme
Court very often hesitates to double guess what the Constitution meant.
In this case, it's so clear. It's very similar to
the right to bear arms. Many people said that's an
obsolete term. You can't have a right to bare arms.

(51:10):
Supreme Court ruled, yes, you are. Unless there's an amendment
of constitution you have the right therefore Americans have the
right to carry weapons, and that's been there, so this
is a very clear statement. Many courts over the decade
centuries have enforced that principle. I don't think the conservatives

(51:30):
are going to go undermine it.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
I was stunned to find out that there are and
I'm trying to think of the numbers now, but there
are a large number of Chinese companies that specialize in
organizing Chinese mother's births in America on the basis that
they then pick up citizenship. And the number is really

(51:56):
quite astounding.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Well, I haven't heard that, but I don't listen to
use that often, I suppose. But at the same time,
that's something can be done. Of course, if they leave
the country with their mothers, that's not considered birth. That's
the distinction. In other words, if you remain in the

(52:19):
United States and you grow up here and you were
born here, you'll be a citizen. Leaving the country I
think would be another matter, because then you would be
deemed not being born in the United States truly, in
the sense that you're really born to someone who was

(52:39):
not an American and didn't want to be in America.
So that's where it gets complex. So if there were
a Chinese conspiracy to give birth children the United States
and have them become spies and so on two reasons.
I don't think the Constitution would support that, but the
courts would. And secondly, I think they're more likely to

(53:02):
become tech tech experts making a lot of money.

Speaker 4 (53:07):
That going back to Sush George, I'm going to leave
you with a different note. I've just recalled yesterday in
the Well. I read it yesterday in the Wallstreet Journal,
two stories and one was repeated here in local media
to do with a fellow who was very succeeds. He's
but forty five, I think, very successful, built a company

(53:31):
tech company, sold it for one hundred and eighty million
dollars and moved to New Zealand. And he lives not
far from me, and he and his wife, living right
on the beach, are very very happy. That was followed
with another article because the rules have changed for people

(53:52):
of wealth to come and move into New Zealand much
more easily than they could before. That story was followed
with another one, and it turns out there's quite a
number of them who have moved to New Zealand because
there's gate of gun crime and this and that and
whatever else, and they're living here very very happily and satisfactorily.

(54:16):
And that's really all I've got to say.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Well, it may well be. I've been to New Zealand.
It's a lovely country. I rather enjoy the United States
as well. And the idea that there is so much
gunfire and so much danger and so on and so forth, well,
I live here in Texas and I don't see very
much of it. So they're the media, which many people

(54:43):
don't care for, not too upset about them. They make
too much of what the media reports that somebody was
killed in the United States or a huge country, someone
has always killed in the United States. They fail to
have the story how many people weren't killed in the
United States today. So some people want to go to
New Zealand. I think they're not seeing for their lives.

(55:06):
Is simply a very pleasant place to live, and they
choose it. Yeah, I don't think that's symbol of anything.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
Except I'm sitting in the middle of a climate bomb
at the moment.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Anyway, George, as always.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
Thank you very much, appreciate it, and we shall talk
at some stage in the future.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
Yes, we should Thanks George, take care bye.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
Into the marror room for three hundred and twenty three
with no time to waste. Mister's producer, how's your week?

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Late?

Speaker 3 (55:53):
In great? Thanks excellent? That was yours? Mine is mine's
chugging along just nicely? Thank you and I shall lead
if you don't mind. Does it is that all right?

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (56:06):
Does Iran have the means of desired to escalate? If
Bush comes to shove? What will Trump and others do?

Speaker 1 (56:12):
What?

Speaker 4 (56:13):
We're sort of in the thick of things of finding out,
aren't we? To this point, the damage appears somewhat limited
and recoverable, albeit will take time. Read the world implications
for critical supplies. I see Winston as betting this period
will be brief. If the extent of damage in the
region becomes more critical and longer term, then the region

(56:35):
and the world could be in real trouble with consequences
far more extensive and far reaching. Even if things quietened
down soon, will anything be resolved per se? Only time
will tell how things play out when all is said
and done. There are a great many opinions across the
entire spectrum around current events. Watching some podcasts, I notice

(56:59):
people seem to take such comfort in their own opinions,
belief systems, and how they see the world, can talk
ourselves to do anything. It seems at times we all
have a belief system and ego self. What is of
note is many so very fixed in their beliefs, which
limits growth. If hold understandings with freedom to learn, experience,

(57:23):
grow and evolve as to our personal truths, we are
much more adaptable, open to thinking about things, and capable
of looking at things from many perspectives, not just to
fix one, to inform and guide us. Having said that,
my own patience has grown thin in a number of
subjects affecting New Zealand after observing our descent for so long.

(57:48):
That doesn't mean that I'm right at the expense of
someone else, or that I am necessarily right at all.
I do feel the need, however, to challenge the status
grow when it comes to matters that I have given
much thought to. If everyone remains silent on certain matters,
our fate renew Zealand is sealed. If I'm wrong, that's fine,
and sometimes I What is most disturbing is that politicians

(58:11):
often do not consider that they might be wrong or
the consequences for the people of New Zealand if they are,
which is why I am challenging the assumptions, albeit to
no effect.

Speaker 6 (58:23):
Layton Jin says Canada desperately needs Jordan Peterson again. At
a recent New Democratic Party convention, the Looney NDP released
colored equity cards so that people who claim any intersection
of victimhood may use these cards to gain priority to speak,
reported Rita Panahi from Sky News Australia, talk about the

(58:45):
luxury beliefs of the elite class, as Louise Klegg called it.
By the way, I hadn't realized Louise kleigis Angus Taylor's
wife until this podcast, the NDP is DEI on steroids.
Yet the antidote DEI existed two seven hundred years ago,
coming from the wisest king ever lived, King Solomon, based

(59:07):
on his wisdom from his Book of Proverbs. The answer
to DEI is justice, equity, and righteousness. In other words,
justice must always overrule diversity. Equity of opportunity must always
overrule equity of outcomes, and righteousness must always overrule inclusion. Justice, equity,

(59:31):
and righteousness. That is the wisest way to deal with
all people.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
I love getting mail from Texas. Edams are written from Texas,
and it's a lengthy one, so I'm going to have
to scrub some of it, my friend.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
But here we go.

Speaker 4 (59:46):
Great article about the current state of New Zealand, not mine,
but sums up things well. I have lived in New
Zealand for twenty seven years and something has changed. This
country gave my family everything, safety, opportunity, and freedom. I
love this country, but today it feels as though we
are slowly losing what once made this place so special,

(01:00:08):
and too few are willing to say it plainly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
So here it is.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
What has gone wrong over the past two decades. The
cost of living has surged, while wages have kept not
kept pace. Housing has moved beyond the reach of everyday
New Zealanders. We have built a system where hard work
no longer guarantees progress. Small businesses, the backbone of this country,
are under sustained pressure. Crime and social disorder feel more

(01:00:35):
prevalent than ever. But the issues run deeper than economics.
We've lost a sense of shared values and national identity.
We have adopted ideas and policies that divide us more
than they unite. We have prioritized ideology over outcomes. We
have embraced mass migration, slash globalization without assimilation, rapid population

(01:00:59):
growth without clear plan for infrastructure, housing, and health care,
which destroys a country. We have weakened the emphasis on
personal responsibility and strong family structures, destructed the family nucleus unit,
and we have become more focused on being right than
on solving real problems. And at the center of it

(01:01:22):
all lies the greatest issue leadership. Too many of these
corrupt and chief politicians are managing headlines. Too few are
leading the country. They react, they deflect, they defer the
difficult decisions. Meanwhile, every day New Zealanders feel the consequences,
increased pressure, reduced certainty, a fading belief in the future.

(01:01:43):
Let me be clear, this is not about left versus right.
I know everybody as frustrated as I am to see
it every single day, and I don't blame them. Yes,
the current government is performing way better than the last
corrupt and inept administration. That's evident, but that is not
the standard that we should be measuring ourselves against. This

(01:02:03):
is about direction. Do we have a leadership that knows
where this country is heading? Or are we simply managing
decline more effectively than before. And I'm only halfway through it,
so I think i'll put that aside for next week.
But if you took that in, I'd be very keen
for you to give me a reaction to it, because

(01:02:26):
I thought it was pretty eight.

Speaker 6 (01:02:27):
Yeah, absolutely later, and this is from Eileen, and she's
referencing the lovely pieces that you did for Good Friday
on News Talk SEB that were played once every hour.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
I think.

Speaker 6 (01:02:42):
You did them for Christian Broadcasting and they had season hold,
didn't they over Good Friday on News Talks AIRB. So
Aileen's talking about that. She says, Father Frank is right
about you having a golden voice, and I would describe
it as mellifluous. She says, refer to one three, nine,
fourteen to eighteen that describes you as fearfully and wonderfully made.

(01:03:08):
And then Aileen goes on to say, I didn't hear
your Stations of the Cross as I was attending a
church service, but we'll listen to your rendition this week,
miss both you and missus producer. And the void you
left is still wide. Thank you, Eileen. It's been a
long season since your departure. We have to press on though,
and accept life as it unfolds. God bless you both.

(01:03:29):
You are exactly where you're meant to be.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
To everything.

Speaker 6 (01:03:31):
There is a season and a time to every purpose.
Prayers for the Holy Land, the Seaster, and hoping for
peace to return to that blessed suffering land.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
Eileen, that was beautiful. Thank you, Chris says you say
you know. He says, You're welcome to use this slightly
longer piece at the very end of your show as
a mail room letter, or keep it until closer to
election time. Now there's a thought I will park it,
because I'm parking a little bit of stuff these days
as we get closer for repetition. The Reserve Bank of

(01:04:03):
New Zealand has an inflation target of one to three percent.
But inflation is not the cost of goods going up,
although that's how it's measured. Inflation is the decrease in
a currency's value. Between eighteen fifteen and nineteen fourteen, the
British Empire experienced near zero long term inflation and price stability.
To achieve this across their globe spanning empire, they had

(01:04:27):
to ensure money supply matched economic output at the time
when the fastest mail traveled on steamships. They gauged this
by stopping the money printers when people began swapping their
notes for gold in London, and when people wanted notes again,
the printers started. But with feet currency, its value is

(01:04:47):
tied to confidence. If people want to invest in New Zealand,
they need to buy New Zealand currency, and its value
goes up. If conditions change and they want out of
New Zealand, they sell their New Zealand currency and its
value drops. So our dollar's value is a measure of
confidence in the country's future. This means the political clout

(01:05:08):
it has the largest influence on the value of the
New Zealand dollar. Uncertainty and less opportunity for profit means
our dollar value will drop, but stronger property rights, certain
certainty about laws, and decreasing crime will increase the value
of the dollar. On this basis, who we vote for
in November will determine where the Reserve Bank sets the

(01:05:31):
interest rate. If we vote for parties who increase productivity
and investment into New Zealand, our borrowing costs will go down.
But parties who reward the lazy play favorites and drive
investment offshore will guarantee the cost of living increases. Well,
you know, I haven't heard the value of the dollar

(01:05:53):
against the US or against the pound. Actually, I haven't
heard it in the last well since before the long weekend.
But when I did hear it, it was forty three cents. Still,
it's been stuck at forty three forty four macs for
so long. That is just a hauling as far as
this country is concerned. And I think that in the
very near future we're going to we're going to make

(01:06:15):
a good attack on that.

Speaker 6 (01:06:18):
Leyden Brett says, just one line Podcast three two two.
Nice one, many thanks from me.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Three two to two. That was Louise.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
There you go, short and simple, short and sweet, and
we shall we shall see you next week.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
You will.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
Now to conclude Podcast three hundred and twenty three A
little something different AI, not your usual AI, but AI
that should have most of us thinking if we haven't
gone down this road already, No, AI cannot think and
it's not going to take your job. Maybe, just maybe

(01:07:18):
things won't be a disaster. Everywhere you look today there
are articles claiming that artificial intelligence, the AI revolution, is
going to result in widespread job blusses and possibly even
an economic depression. A research outfit called Satrini, Citri and
I even went so far as to publish a report

(01:07:41):
suggesting that by twenty twenty eight, the economic damage could
be so severe that the US would need to introduce
universal basic income to support those workers displaced by technology.
Due to Citrini's massive readership, the piece went viral, resulting
in firms that the report claimed were at risk collapsing

(01:08:03):
in a share price. Never Mind that it's later came
out that the co author of this re runs a
hedge fund that was shorting the stocks that the report
claimed were most exposed to AI disruption. Now that's a
story for another time, says the author. I'm going to
formally counter this argument, and rather than speculate on what

(01:08:24):
could or could not happen, I'm going to use verified
facts about the reality of AI technology. The most important
fact AI cannot think. AI is essentially an algorithm that
answers questions or makes decisions based on probabilities. It is
neither creative nor is it able to reason. It simply

(01:08:44):
scrolls the Internet, mostly Reddit and Wikipedia, which are not
exactly bastions of truth. And sorts the information in a
manner that it can predict what is the most probable
response or answer to a query. Put simply, AI in
its current form is a kind of super parrot, capable

(01:09:05):
of repeating things it had heard or read in a
fashion that sounds coherent, but it cannot actually think. If
you don't believe me, perhaps you'll be leave. Researchers from
Stanford who recently performed a study through which they asked
multiple AI models open ended queries, that is, questions that

(01:09:28):
do not have a single correct answer, and they didn't
do this once or twice, but twenty six thousand times. Initially,
the researchers expected two things. Firstly, a specific aimodel to
come up with different answers each time it was asked
an open ended query, and secondly, different aimodels to come

(01:09:50):
up with different answers. Instead, they found the exact opposite happened.
One an AI model would answer the same question to
an open ended query every time, two different AI models
ended up coming up with the same solutions to open
ended questions. The paper concluded that AI actually suffers from

(01:10:13):
hive mind, hive mind or homogeneous thinking, and most worryingly,
this boring slash repetitive thinking occurred across numerous AI models.
Put simply, instead of providing diverse, creative answers, AI, even
across different models with different coding and training, is quite

(01:10:36):
boring and repetitive. As if that wasn't bad enough, AI
also hallucinates or simply makes things up and states them
as facts. AI does not have a fact checking mechanism
built in, meaning it isn't looking things up in a
verified database, so when asked about something obscure, ambiguous, or
outside its training, it tends to generate answers that are fluent,

(01:11:00):
confidence sounding, but wrong. Some of the more common hallucinations
include fabricating site inventing plausible sounding academic papers, authors or
URLs that do not exist, getting biographical details wrong about
real people, mismembering statistics or dates, inventing legal cases, historical events,

(01:11:27):
or product specifications, and confidently describing a process incorrectly. As
the below table illustrates, this issue is endemic in llms,
with hallucination rates ranging from fifteen to fifty two percent.
In this context, the only people who could use AI

(01:11:47):
effectively in a corporate setting would be those individuals who
are experts that are on the subject matter that they're
discussing with the AI model. After all, these would be
the only people capable of determining when an LM is
providing a sound insight idea as opposed to fabricating key

(01:12:10):
aspects of its answer. Now, whether there was a third
page that I'm not sure but that covers it off
now I utilize it because I'm skeptical. I think everybody
should be skeptical about all sorts of things, as you
would have realized by now. And so it just maybe

(01:12:31):
that the opening, the opening quote is correct. Maybe, just
maybe things won't be a disaster. Now. If you are
involved in AI and you want to have a go
at that a comment on it, then please do. The
more conversation over it, the better. So that'll take us

(01:12:51):
out for three twenty three. If you would like to
correspond with us Latent at newstalksb dot co dot nz
that is the I G H T O M. Latent
a News Talks of B dot co dot nz or
Caravin with a y at newstalksb dot co dot enz.
We'll be back with three four before you know it.

(01:13:12):
So in the meantime, as always, thank you for listening
and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
Thank you. For more from News Talks at b Listen
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