A letter from the self-described 'ultra rich' argues the rich must be taxed to prevent catastrophic inequality. Getty images files a legal complaint on companies making AI-assisted image software. In an interview on state-funded news, 58-year-old serial killer Mikhail Popkov volunteers to join the Russian military. All this and more on today's Strange News.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Grading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is all. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis
code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. We're going to some strange
places today, folks were going to the very heights of
(00:48):
global wealth. There's some interesting statements that came out of Davos.
We're going to some very dark places related to the
ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but not ut in the way
you would expect. We're also touching on the horrifying stories
of serial murders. And before we do any of that,
(01:10):
shout out to all our conspiracy realists in the crowd,
many of whom are artists. You have written to us
and talk to us in person about the ongoing conversation
regarding art and ownership. UH and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. Yeah, well, um,
(01:34):
we're we're kind of at this point now where the rubber,
as they say, meets the road, and that usually comes
in the form of lawsuits. We've been talking about this
stuff for a while now as to you know, how
these fun little kind of curiosities like generating yourself a
cool um you know, cartoony avatar one that looks like
(01:54):
you're in Lord of the Rings or like a Greek
god or whatever is super fun and everything, but also
how you're a set jually paying for the privilege of
training these AI algorithms. Um with what was the one
that was doing the little little guys? Uh, Lenza, Yeah,
Lenza was a big popular one, had a big moment,
a company that's been around for a while but only
has really kind of started to make ways with this
(02:17):
rash of just you know, virtual selfie posts that have
been actually learned about it from a from super producer
Alexis code name Doc holiday Uh and asked her what
the thing was called and she told me and I
immediately fed it all kinds of information and pictures to
get these cool images. One for me when from my
kid and went from my kids mom um, only to
be told by a very savvy friend of mine and
(02:39):
the show Matt riddle. Uh, hey, buddy, h f y,
I be careful with that stuff. You're basically just paying
for the privilege of training their AI. UM. So, when
you're training in AI in terms of like image recognition,
feeding an actual photographs, that's one thing. But the esthetics
that these AI s are generating are often trained with
(03:00):
actual art, with actual stuff that's on the Internet from
folks like Friends of the Show, an illustrator of the
stuff they don't want you to know book uh. Nick
Turbot Benson who actually did one of these UM for
the rapper Killer Mike UM and actually was very shocked
to realize that the aesthetic that the thing spit out
of Killer Mike looked remarkably similar to a an image
(03:24):
that he generated, you know, he created generated, He's a
he's a human. He created an image of Killer Mike
forso run the Jewels Materials poster or you know, a
T shirt or something like that. UM. And this is
not uncommon. This is being noticed, you know, across the
board by artists saying, hey, uh, the aesthetics of of
of some of these things like mid Journey UM deviant Art,
(03:46):
which has an art generating algorithm Stability AI um and
and others eerily similar to some stuff that I've done
or my colleagues have done. And we know that a
big thing about these as, as you've mentioned several times,
been his specificity. Whether it's you know, like a chat
bought like like GPT chat or whatever, it's about saying
something something in the style of with lighting similar to
(04:08):
So it really is all about giving an information that
it can kind of ape, you know, like whether it
be UM actually in the style of saying Andy Warhol
or maybe our Cromb or some artists like Michell Michelle
boskiat you can do that, and it does that, But
how does it do that. It does that by looking
for examples of that artist's work. Um And while those
are big names, uh and and and many you know,
(04:30):
like working artists aren't going to have names that big.
But the nature of being a working artist is that
a lot of your stuff, whether it be through clients
that you've had over the years or you know, examples
on your website of your work, that stuff is out
there on the open Internet. Uh. And that is the
kind of information these algorithms are scraping to feed their
generative capabilities. You know. For this stuff. Uh. So we
(04:53):
talked about lawsuits. There is a class action lawsuit accusing Stability, AI,
d v An Art, and mid Journey of violations of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m c A.
I'm gonna read a little bit from an article on
Kotaku uh detailing some of the allegations. The lawsuit alleges
(05:14):
direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement related to forgeries, violations
of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violation of class members
rights to publicity, breach of contract related to deviant art
terms of services, and various violations of California's unfair competition laws.
Um Matthew Butterick is one of the lawyers representing the class.
(05:36):
This is a case that was filed in San Francisco courts,
and it's super super interesting because the chatter kind of is,
you know, this could set precedent for or against the
interests of these artists, right because if it's struck down
and it turns out that this is not in fact
(05:57):
copyright infringement, and then they're not actually being ripped off
directly in a way that's protected by law, then these
artists are forgiving me shoot out of luck. Uh, and
then they they're gonna have to take a whole another
tech here. Um. You know, we've talked about the interesting
aspects of AI are using in conjunction with humans that
generate art, you know, as sort of another tool. But
(06:19):
when you think about a lot of the things, for example,
these types of portraits that we're talking about, a lot
of artists make their make their bread and butter doing
these kinds of portraits at comic cons or what have you.
You know, with with fan art, you know of various
characters and things that they they sell to to make money.
And this really does you know, if someone could just
feed a couple of pictures into an algorithm and generate
(06:40):
something for five bucks, why would they pay an artist
five hundred bucks you know to do something. I mean,
I have answers to that. It's a hypothetical question, but
you know it is a question nonetheless, and there's a
lot of people that won't pay the five hundred that
would rather just have the the neat you know, avatar
for a couple of bucks. Um Stability AI and mid
Journey or probably too you may have heard of. Mid
(07:01):
Journey is probably one of the crazier ones where a
lot of interesting artists are using mid journey to create
kind of weird, psychedelic, you know, sci fi landscapes and
very interesting things that maybe don't exist in the world. UM.
So you may have seen these kinds of images posted.
A lot of them are actually being animated. There's there's
ways of using this AI stuff to generate these morphing
(07:23):
kind of animated images where you obviously like lots of
images were combined. They're kind of morphing from one to
the other, and it's got a certain look to it.
You can kind of tell right away that that's what
you're looking at. UM. Deviant Art, on the other hand,
has been around for a long time and it's more
of like an art kind of community and portfolio for artists. UM.
But it also has an algorithm or like an AI
(07:45):
art generator thing that it's been pushing out. So this
is um, you know, naming all of these companies in
this class action lawsuits. So that's its own thing. And
that's interesting because again if it if the suit does
not go the way of the artists, and this could
crack the gates wide open for even more of this
kind of thing to say, oh, it's just it's not
(08:06):
actually stealing anybody's intellectual property. It's just using things that
are freely available on the Internet, and it's determined that
the work being generated are completely unique. Um. Whether or
not you you you would you would argue with that
point or not. Um. Another I think even more interesting
development here is that Getty Images are also suing um.
(08:32):
Because we know Getty Images is a very litigious company.
First and foremost, you have to license their thousands and
thousands and thousands of images, and they are not cheap. Um.
You know, they go to image about every you know,
step and repeat kind of red carpet events. So there's
tons of celebrity images, tons of archival images, all of
this kind of stuff, and they are uh, you know,
(08:53):
stock photos is what they're Um. They are suing Stability
AI or accusing. I think the suit has been filed yet,
but a press release came out before apparently Stability AI
was informed officially of the lawsuit, and they say, I'm
just gonna read what Getty Images has to say. Getty
Images believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors. Accordingly,
(09:17):
Getty Images provided licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes
related to training artificial intelligence systems in a manner that
respects personal and intellectual property rights. Stability AI did not
seek any such license from Getty Images, and instead, we
believe chose to ignore viable licensing options and longstanding legal
(09:37):
protections in pursuit of their stand alone commercial interests, to
which stability AI told CNN, we don't know anything about this.
We're hearing it for the first time in the press
and we find it a little odd. That's how we
heard about it. Quote. We're still awaiting the service of
any documents. Should we receive them, we will comment appropriately.
And they did. Getty Images in their their official statement
(10:01):
over on their newsroom, they did confirm that they have
commenced those legal proceedings, so they are under they are
underway as we as we record today. And this is
what's funny about this story, know as it reminds me,
um Matt, you probably remember back in the day we
had to when when we were much smaller, scrappier outfit,
(10:23):
we had to have the serious, like family dinner table,
hard conversations about how many photos from getty we could
afford to use. And it got acrimonious at times, well
because our company wasn't huge, but it was a big
enough company to where we paid a certain amount of
money for a certain number of images per month, right
(10:44):
per pay period, and we had several video shows in production.
So Ben and I at the time would have to say, Okay, look,
we we've got this episode coming up on the War
on Drugs. I think we're gonna need I'm estimating seven
images that we need from d so uh if we
could please please have those And that's how it would go,
(11:05):
because we would have to pay for each one of
those images that we licensed to put in our video.
Why the stuff they don't want you to know get
all the thumbnails? To your point, Matt is, I don't
know the answer that because I've never really had to
mess with us too much. I imagine the licensing fee
pay depends on the size of your audience and also
the use of said image and how long it's going
(11:25):
to live and in what medium is going to live.
It gets a little different when you're dealing with larger accounts.
So for a company like at the time, House Stuff
Works that had multiple shows, multiple things going on, it's
and it's it's tougher to like estimate an audience. So
I don't know exactly what happened. I wasn't high enough
Ben and I were not high enough in the company
(11:47):
to know exactly what the you know, contract looked like
at the time. But that's certainly the way of function.
You pay for a certain number of images you license,
and their perpetual worldwide licenses so they last further anywhere.
But dude, if you go on Stable diffusions website, look
at their f a Q and you notice that there's
(12:07):
a direct question on here, what is the copyright on
images created through Stable Diffusion Online? This is the Stability
AI generator And their answer is images created through Stable
Diffusion Online are fully open source, explicitly following under the
c c O one point zero Universal Public Domain Dedication.
(12:29):
What a great time to be a lawyer, lead conspiracy realist.
If you're on the Getty case, tell us what kind
of boat you're gonna buy, no doubt, because this really
is like brave New World kind of territory. This hasn't
been dealt with. This is when this will be decided
one way or the other. And y'all I asked to
you both, any ideas as to why Getty might not
(12:51):
care for this big picture. Sure, they've converted there the
images that they make people pay tons of mone for
into public domain fragments, right, they fragmented them into public domain.
I don't know what you'd call it um instances. You
(13:12):
could call it about that, but would wouldn't you have
to show though that it was like, literally, here's this
face from this Getty image. I mean, I would hope
that stability AI would not be so stupid as to
have it be like a cop cut and paste mishmash
of Getty images. The idea is that it's creating a
new face out of a bunch of other faces, and
you can't tell from the end result what went into it.
(13:34):
It will be like the fair use argument, Right, I
am altering your thing, I'm making it new by using
parts of it. But they don't even know which images
were used to feed the particular output that there. There's
no way of tracking that to my understanding. You know,
maybe there is, and maybe they could request that, but
that also might be a moot point, because it doesn't
(13:55):
really matter what goes into it if there's no recognizable
portion of the original in the end product. That's a
solid argument. But let's let me also advance just a
very off the cuff freestyle conspiracy here. Uh. I would
say that it would be very helpful for Getty Images
to have a bad guy or an antagonist to fight
(14:15):
against because they have, uh, they have tons of lawsuits
against them for something like forty seven thousand photos. And uh.
The photographers who took against Getty, Yeah, against Getty for compensation.
They're saying, hey, can you pay us because you're using
(14:37):
my work? Right? Uh? And I you know, I know
you guys know about licensing Getty, So run the jewels
for me, right, cough up my my slice of the
pie here. Uh. There was a I think in particular,
there was a one billion dollar lawsuit uh from a
photographer named Carol high Smith. Uh. And this dates back
(15:02):
to six I don't know if any of these things
have been resolved, but I'm just saying, like, Getty is
a huge company. They're huge force in the field, and
we can't confuse them with some kind of shining paragon
on a hill. It's just weird to me that they're
getting accused of some of the same stuff they're accusing
and it's it's the it's the pot calling the AI
kettle black. You know, I mean no and no question
(15:24):
and honestly too. I mean they have a vested interest
in defending or or at least um fighting against this
technology just lock stock and barrel, because if you can
just type in keywords and generate a copyright free stock
image without having to license something, Um, that's a huge
part of their business that's gone. You know. Shutter Stock,
(15:46):
who's a Getty competitor, they've leagued up with Open Ai,
was the company behind Dolly um and also uh the
AI chat bot chat GPT, So they're thinking ahead because
they know it's an bitable. I would argue shutter Stock
is also a newer, you know, more kind of like
with the Times company. Getty has been around for ages, uh,
(16:07):
and they've got legacy skin in the game, so I
think they're kind of looking out for their best interests
in terms of like slowing down the spreading tide of
AI image generation one of the biggest parts of Getty's
I don't know the reason why they're used so much,
I guess is because they have those creative images, which
(16:28):
were the ones we would use for our show often. Well,
they have a whole other set of images which are
meant for journalism purposes. So that's that's that's a different portion.
I mean they couldn't. That would be a whole another
thing about right to of publicity and all that stuff.
If like, all of a sudden, you just generated an
AI image of a celebrity that never actually took place,
that celebrity could then sue you, you know what I mean. Maybe,
(16:51):
I mean it's it's brave New what it's a it's
brave new water in a brave it's real deep water
in a brave new world. That's the way we say it.
But keep my stumble in there at least arshly, doc
because that's what makes us human, right, or that's what
makes us appear to be human. Uh. Two big notes.
I think we should say this current legal beef. At
least from my understanding, he's taken place in London. Yeah,
(17:12):
the app rather than the US laws. It's legal to
scrape the web however you wish in the US. Oh.
I mean, there's there's so many things to discuss here,
and let's keep it brief. And I think we definitely
have another update for this stuff coming in the very
near future um, and I do want to just close
by by referencing a thing that you found where we
just mentioned chat GPT. Um it can it's like not
(17:35):
image generation, it's texts and content generation. And somebody apparently
sent the Australian incredible songwriter singer artist Nick Cave some
song lyrics that chat GPT had generated in the style
of Nick Cave, and uh he had a thing or
two to say about it that I think you could
apply across the board to this stuff. I understand that
(17:57):
chat GPT is in its infancy, but perhaps that is
the emerging horror of AI, that it will forever be
in its infancy, as it will always have further to
go in the direction is always forward, always faster. It
can never be rolled back or slowed down as it
moves us towards a utopian future maybe or are total destruction.
Who can possibly say which? Judging by the song quote
(18:18):
in the style of Nick Cave, though it doesn't look
good the apocalypse as well on its way, This song sucks.
I recommend reading the uh, the the full Nick Cave letter.
And Nick, if you're listening nice nicely, we're gonna take
a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor
and let me back with some more strange news, and
(18:43):
we have returned. Quick heads up, folks, if you are
listening with family members, if you have kids in the
audience today, you may want to fast forward about fifteen
minutes or so. Uh. The following story may not be
appropriate for all list nurse, but it caught our collective eye.
(19:04):
The war in Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine, continues apace,
and sadly here in the West, a lot of people
are encountering some degree of fatigue about it. Right, you
probably find yourself reading fewer stories about what's going down.
People can just kind of become acclimated to the most
(19:29):
terrible stuff, the most terrible news, and we see this
happen all the time. Part of the reason it's such
a problem, at least in the US, is because of
the way the news cycle is uh designed to maximize advertising.
It's true. Sorry, Uh. You may have heard our earlier
(19:50):
episode on a mercenary army that is completely, totally, not
officially a part of Russia. Russia's military. It's just run
by a close friend of Vladimir Putin. It's called the
Wagner Group, and they do a lot of things that
ordinary or official armies would not do or should not do.
(20:13):
And recently, as the war and the invasion have continued,
have dragged on, and have even escalated, the Russian state
has encountered a ton of problems. It turns out that
the Cold War legend of the great Dangerous Russian Army
may have been largely a legend, at least embellished. The
(20:36):
technology is old, a lot of it's not working. They're
making some very what appeared to be very basic mistakes
that ordinarily professional offecial military simply would not make, Like
unsecured calms really day one stuff. Uh. And you guys
heard about the conscription fears and all the Russian men
(20:58):
of possible conscription trying to get out of the country.
I've heard this, and I've also well, wait, the conscription
fears because they're leaving because they're worried about being sent
off to the Ukraine front. Correct. Is this like being
drafted or is this different? They're already drafted. They're just
like dormant essentially, and they'll be like called into action
(21:19):
or activated as it were. Yeah, they're fleeing conscription or
being drafted. Uh. The phrase that you'll hear to describe
this is called mobilization. So yes, so several times Putin
has come out and it's come out in the news.
They've been taking folks who are not, you know, normally
(21:40):
soldiers by trade, and just like the US did in Vietnam,
they they're drafting them. So as this um. Actually this
is happening in two but very towards the end of
the year especially, it's been tough for me to know
how much of that is propaganda on the Western side,
Like looking on they're even getting their prisoners to go
(22:03):
and forcing these people to fight. You know, I don't
know how much of a really good point. I thought
the same thing. It feels like something you would say,
right if you were doing information. Sure, and I think
that's a really that's a really good point. But we
have to note that per Russia's own reporting, over two
(22:23):
hundred thousand people have were already drafted into their armed
forces in by October, so a lot of people were
trying to leave. And at the same time, the Russian
state is lowering it's standards right for who can be accepted,
who would qualify you know what I mean? You see
(22:45):
this happen in a lot of militaries in the past
and the Wager group. Do please check out that that
episode because it is it is disturbing. It's very true story.
But now these big variables lead us to this very
disturbing thing. I want to talk about the most prolific
(23:09):
serial murderer in Russia as a guy named Mikhail Popekov.
He is alive, he is in prison. He was called
the Angarsk maniac, the werewolf. He is serving two life
sentences for the murder of eight three women. And this
(23:31):
includes later confessions he gave after his arrest and trial
and imprisonment. Uh. And these are women who were between
the ages of eighteen and fifty. They were murdered in tortured,
then murdered in horrific ways, and then he defiled their bodies.
(23:53):
This happened probably between all the way to He said
that he was doing this because he wanted to quote
cleanse the city of prostitutes his words, not ours. And
because there have been some deals allowing criminals or prisoners,
(24:16):
people on the wrong side of the law to join
the Russian military in exchange for a pardon. Pope gov
has put his name in the figurative hat State Television
interviewed him recently and he voiced his He voiced his desire.
He said, look, I was a conscript in the Red
(24:38):
Army back in the day. I have experience with radio
and electronic equipment. I would like to join the Russian
military and the invasion of Ukraine. And the thing about this,
this situation is he's not making some crazy pitch some
(24:59):
crazy and saying pitch. Forty thousand convicts have been freed
for serving in the army, and that's to the point
about propaganda. That's a number we were also able to confirm. Wow,
I don't you guys, tell me what you think. In
my mind, if you are going to have a frontline
force that's meant to be a force, wedge that pushes
(25:21):
into areas right and like clears out areas um secures them,
you probably want some of the most hardened dare I say,
bloodthirsty individuals that you can possibly find. Like that feels
like smart strategy to me. They also have to be
competent enough to understand and follow orders right and then
(25:41):
carry out like pretty sophisticated tactics. But I don't know,
is it weird that I feel like having like suicide
squad style crews going through on the front lines might
not be the worst idea. No, I think it's a
it's a tariff ying proposition. But it seems like smart maneuvering.
(26:03):
Is there is this a real possibility? Unclear? That's why
it's at a That's why it's kind of at a crossroads,
because you know, to the point about the suicide squads
would depend upon the nature of the crime, would it not,
now for someone who is a proven necrophile, for someone Yeah,
(26:25):
for someone who is proven to have murdered not because
they were, you know, attempting to steal food to feed themselves,
or not because it was a matter of self defense
for someone like that. We also have to consider the
(26:46):
the other ethical angle. Even if they are being treated
as cannon fodder by the Wagner group, which seems to
be the case, then is this not letting them out
in the wild to do the thing they enjoy Again,
I know, I think that's exactly what it is. I'm worried.
(27:06):
I suppose that it feels like a good strategy to them.
Does that make sense? It feels it's like the inmates
are running the asylum kind of situation. Right where it's
just like let the floodgates open, you know, big worst case,
you know, I don't know it matches with the horror
stories that are coming out of Ukraine right now, where
battles are being fought, right and the aftermath that we
(27:28):
discussed on the show previously, when the Wagner group and
other groups, you know, leave a town after that's essentially
been sacked, and the horror stories of the exact same
kinds of things that were that this guy did. I suppose.
To be fair to the Russian side of this equation,
we do need to point out that he has not
(27:48):
received an official statement from Russia. The Russian media, you know,
the state media was allowed to show this interview, but
that's not the same thing as them allowing him to
join the front lines there. He is older, he is
fifty eight years old. Um, Like a lot of these monsters,
(28:08):
you can't trust what they're saying. They might make grandiose statements.
So we don't know too much about his specific military experience,
not that that matters in this case. We do know
he was a police officer and uh, as we've seen
in similar cases, he used his official position to further
enable his crimes. Well, I mean, it's not like Putin
(28:32):
is fighting much of a pr you know, war. He's
already kind of, you know, emerged from this situation looking
kind of like a supervillain. So is there really much
of a leap between what his images now and how
this would tarnish it further. I don't know. It's the
question hypothetical. It's a good question, and the really the
(28:55):
only reason this guy is alive right now is because
there's a formal suspension of capital punishment in Russia. And
you know, unless you run into the wrong window, it
seems that the third story windows of Russia have become
a little bit more dangerous than the courts. Uh, maybe
(29:17):
we can do an episode on that. But this gets
me because you know, war is so fun, it's such
a fundamentally horrific thing. We hear these stories sometimes about
people who are on the wrong side of the law
trying to help the public good as a way of
reducing their own sentence right or getting better circumstances and incarceration.
(29:42):
I'm thinking about convicts fighting wildfires, for instance, and those
those convicts out west in the United States have no
doubt saved lives, but where is the line here? You
know what I mean? Especially knowing these forces are encounter
orne civilians in Ukraine, I feel like this guy is
(30:03):
the titular line, if not, if not, way way over it.
You know, you don't get a nickname like the werewolf
for nothing, and especially considering that, uh, he was able
to elude law enforcement for twenty years, probably because he
(30:23):
knew some of the standard operating procedures from his own
time working in law enforcement. So this is someone who
if they get out, they could stay out. It would
be kind of hard to catch them if they got
a chance, if they got a chance to ghost. And
forgive me for not fully remembering exactly how suicide squad worked.
Wasn't that sort of a secret program. It's not really
(30:46):
something you'd publicize, right because you want them to be
able to be disavowed if they're captured or killed or whatever.
It would be more like a black ops. So publicizing
doing this probably not be smart. It would just be
the doing of it, and to have that, but then
kind of do it, you know, on the down, the
on the low low. I don't know, what do you
(31:08):
guys think? Is there a benefit to publicizing it? I
would think not. I'm just wondering. This is obviously the
guy who's running his mouth saying I want to do this.
It's not the same as you know putin saying we've
we've decided to start a program that's going to release
all of our most hardened psychotic criminals from prison to
fight the good fight. I mean, if you can survive
(31:29):
in um a goulag on the hind lens of Russia,
then you are you have become a very dangerous person.
So there there is also it. You could you could
see a psi op edge to it, you know, announcing
a very different version of this, like how inglorious bastards
in that heavily fictionalized World War two thing, they their
(31:50):
existence became uh or took on a psychological aspect because
people were terrified. In d C's suicide Squad, some of
those villains have superpowers. If someone had a superpower, you
would definitely, to your ability can script them. But with
those suicide squads, UH are operating on pain of death.
(32:13):
It's kind of like UH. In various military conflicts in
ages past, you would put the you would put the
people who were inept or didn't want to be there,
as the first wave sometimes and you would have the
real out and find out people right behind them ready
to kill them if they turned around. Yeah. But if
(32:36):
I'm not mistaken, even some of those suicide squatters with
their like explosive net collars and and minders still got away. Yeah,
because you get to have a sequel, you know for sure. Uh.
And at this point we're gonna pause here because this
touches on a lot of other things. It touches on
the history of outfits like the French Foreign Legion, It
(32:57):
touches on the gray market of mercenary or and we
have some fellow conspiracy realists who are likely acquainted with
with some aspect of that world. We want to hear
your thoughts, folks. What do you think the line is?
Should criminals, uh, criminals be permitted to join into a
(33:20):
war in pursuit of a pardon? Does it depend on
what kind of crimes they committed? Do you think that
Putin and co. Are gonna play ball with a monstrous,
monstrous individual. Let us know, we're gonna pause for a
word from our sponsor. We're not gonna end on such
a dark note. Never fear, We're gonna talk about the future,
(33:49):
and we're back and guys strap in we are going
for a real trip all the way over to Geneva,
Switzerland because we're gonna visit the PAP PAP World Economic Forum. Yes, yes,
(34:10):
the Zuck is here. Probably, I'm not sure if he is.
I'm sure he is. How he's sucking up. He's out there,
he's out there. I was watching it earlier today because
it's happening right now as we're recording this episode on
the week of what is it? It's January eighteenth right now,
but all this week the World Economic Forum is happening
in their lives, streaming all these things. So I got
(34:32):
to listen to John Kerry earlier talking about ways to
fix climate change. Is there, freaking yeah Kemp, Governor of Georgia,
Bryant Kemp, who's not exactly known for his like progressive
ways of thinking, which is sort of what we associate
places like the World Economic Forum with, but also it's
(34:54):
just kind of where the elite meet to have kind
of closed door deal making sessions. Yeah. I hope George
Bush was there too, fellow skull and bonesman with R
I like how I like how down home in Texan
folksy that Connecticut born psionic So folksy, I like it
(35:15):
to ben um. All right, Well, we are going there
to discuss an open letter that was written recently to
all of the attendees of Davos, the World Economic Forum,
mostly the government officials and high level executives that were attending,
which is most of the people that were there, at
least the speakers. Check out our episode two where we
(35:37):
we talked about some of the security that goes down
to Tacos. It's kind of nuts weird stuff. Yeah, check
it out for sure. If you don't know much about it,
it's worth your time. But there's a reason this open
letter was targeted to them and was just put out
right now as the World Economic Forum is occurring. It's
because this The message of this open letter is, Hey,
(36:00):
we writing this letter. We're a bunch of multi millionaires
and even a few billionaires, and we want you government
officials to tax us tax us right now. Tax us harsh,
like tax us so hard, Just tax the crap out
of us. But in order to save the world. That's
(36:23):
the concept. Tax us and the rest of the ultra
wealthy to save the world. Now that sounds like a
tall milkshake. Um, like a delicious tall milkshake. But it
could be a real possible answer to kick starting some
of the things that can't happen right now because they
simply can't get funding. Um, So let's talk about it, guys.
(36:47):
Let's talk about this letter. What it is and what's
what's said in here and could it actually work? So
I shared the open letter with you, guys. I don't
know if you want to go through any of it
and actually read some of it out. Man. I really
appreciate this one because we talked a little bit about
the nature of rhetoric in our episode on skepticism recently,
(37:08):
and so these kind of declarations or manifestose Uh, they
always start with at least one thing everybody can agree on.
We're living in an age of extremes, and they talk
about how just like absolutely terrible the world is right
now for so many people, and how it's gonna get worse.
(37:29):
But then they start talking about wealth extraction, the transfer
of wealth from the majority to a incredibly powerful elite.
And it's stuff that you hear other billionaires mentioned before.
Warren Buffetts talked about it. I think um he mentioned
he pays more taxes than his secretary. I just I
(37:51):
don't know. You can see how people wouldn't trust the statement. Sure,
and and the concept on its face it seems very
kumbaya and like interest, you know, like something they don't
really would be a good idea. But doesn't it And
this is sag and I think it's not true for
the for the for the opposite, does it Wouldn't this
kind of require the consent of the super rich essentially? Well,
(38:14):
that's maybe the whole thing. And that's why I wanted
to bring it to to today's episode is because we
have in this case two and five plus because you
can go in here and sign it as a wealthy
person and add your name to the list. So maybe
a lot of people have added to it since it
was posted not that long ago. But the concept that
(38:36):
there are at least two hun or five ultra wealthy
people who want to do this, uh, that's a good sign.
How do you get enough of the ultra wealthy people
or enough of the organizations that represent the ultra wealthy
people to also sign up for this right to where
it could actually occur because those ultra wealthy people have
a lot of sway with the folks. This open letters
(38:58):
written to the political leaders who are attending Davos. Right,
So it really is as you said been in a way.
Just here's this statement. We want you to know that
we ultra wealthy people I don't know are we see
you non ultra wealthy people, and we stand with you,
(39:18):
and we'll give you our money if the political leaders
make us right. That's the thing. There's not a statement
about the tremendous amount of influence that billionaires can have
on government right through any number of proxies or lobbies.
And that's why I mean I use the word consent
(39:40):
because it's not like anyone's asking me how much tax
I want to pay? And technically, you know, you shouldn't
have to ask the super rich how much tax they
should have to pay. But they can also literally kind
of wreck the economy by pulling all their money out
and you know, moving to another country or something. I
don't know what what what what's the concern with pissing
off the super rich in the scenario, that's probably part
(40:02):
of it. I'm taking their industries elsewhere. I don't know what.
What's like what what leverage do they have? What leverage
does super rich have you know what I mean, Like,
they operate companies in the United States, the obviously also
have overseas divisions of of their companies, and their wealth
can be held overseas and you know, offshore accounts and
(40:22):
things like that. But if if the government were to
say we're going to tax you, the super rich, what
would be the super richest move to say the hell
you are move their money? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I'm making sure I wasn't missing anything and then and
then punish the people responsible for making those moves, right,
get them out of office, hear them in public. Uh,
(40:45):
And I'm asking bone headed questions because I just want
to make sure that we're all on the same page,
fellow bone heads. But no, it's it's interesting. So this
is almost like a petition, kind of an open letter
where they've got some co sign from a handful, But
that wouldn't be enough. It would need to be all
of them, right, Yeah, I I don't know. You would
just have to There would have to be a political
movement where enough supporters who could elect somebody support this
(41:09):
movement right to where the political leader would then support
it because that person knows they can get elected again
for another term no matter what the ultra wealthy people say.
But those ultra wealthy people can sway an election no
matter how many supporters they have. So it's just like,
I think that's I think the risk involved as someone
(41:30):
who's going to be a political representative, whether that's you know,
in a legislature or parliament or you know, prime minister
or president, I think the calculated risk is too high
to go all in on something like this. Yeah, let's
also note that there's a huge problem with the idea
of philanthropy, right the wealthy class. And it is true,
(41:52):
the wealthy class has done a wonderful job gaslighting huge
swaths of the global population into thinking that it's not
good for people to pay their fair share of taxes
and then work towards something that collectively improves the country.
It's good to trust one or two very rich people
(42:14):
to throw money at something they have identified as a problem.
And remember these are some of the most powerful people
on the planet. They are not elected. They choose who
you get to elect. But ben don't those contributions also
serve as tax breaks? They do? They do? Uh, they
service tax breaks. And then the question is do you
(42:36):
think like there's some really interesting discourse on this. I
wouldn't be fair to both sides because look, if you
live in the United States, you might say, well, okay,
put yourself in the mind of Bill Gates. You say,
I could start a charity and I can try to
eradicate things like malaria or polio. Or I can take
all the money I would have done and I can
(42:58):
give it to Uncle Sam and say, hey, I know
you spend a ton of money every year on a
military that goes around the world, but I'd like you
to think about malaria. You can't just like we, Like
you said earlier that we can't choose how much you
want to pay in taxes. We mentioned this one of
our tax activism episodes. You also can't dictate how your
(43:20):
money is spent, not direct and I always say, I
have no bloody idea where my tax money goes. Certainly
isn't into my roads and bridges, certainly not paying for
my kid's education necessarily, or you know, healthcare. I agree
with what we're talking about here. I have to mention
a bit of information from Oxfam. Just if you don't
(43:42):
know about them, you can check them out. Oh x
f A m. They found a couple of things that
I want to talk about. This is from the Guardian.
They said food and energy companies had more than doubled
their profits in two So food and energy companies doubled
their profits. They paid out two hundred and fifty seven
(44:03):
billion two shareholders at a time when more than eight
hundred million people we're going hungry. So that's that isn't
saying shame on you for making money. It is look
at the disparity between these two groups, right, that's inequality
within our society. Is there something we can do about that? Uh,
(44:25):
let's just go a little bit further here. Only four
cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes,
and half the world's billionaires lived in countries with zero
inheritance tax, which we've talked about on this show before, um,
which is on the money that gets handed down right
from grandmother or a mother to a child, father to
(44:48):
a child. That money doesn't get taxed often. A tax
of up to five on the world's multimillionaires and billionaires
could raise one point seven brillion US dollars a year,
which theoretically would be enough to lift two billion people
out of poverty if you could put all that money
(45:10):
into a fund that was specifically focused on creating a
plan to do that, which goes to your point, ben
very difficult to make a government, you know, take a
certain amount of money, siphon it into one plan, and
then make that plan come to fruition. Yeah, and there's
there's this other issue too that keeps I keep coming
back to and pardon me if this sounds a little
(45:32):
bit dismissive or cynical. Can't they just not put money
in offshore tax havens? Can't you just stop paying industry
of people to help you avoid the taxes and the
system that you inherently support, Like why can't you just
do that? Now? Who? Who looked around and said, well,
(45:54):
I can't fire my wealth estate management folks. They kept
me out of the Panama papers. What I need is
to write a letter yea, yeah, which that's but it's cynical.
We we haven't met these people, so we can't speak, Uh,
we can't speak with certitude about their motivations, their ambitions,
(46:19):
or their sincerity. But still it feels like it might
be kind of a talk is cheap situation. I'm just
being honest, No, I agree that it feels that way.
I want to give you, guys, one quote from an
individual that's fascinating to me. There's Uh, this person's story
is complicated, way more complicated than you will understand. After
reading one article, I recommend reading several. I'll tell you
(46:43):
who they are after I read the quote quote. The
whole world, economists and millionaires alike can see the solution
that is staring us all right in the face. We
have to tax the ultra rich if we care about
the safety of democracy, about our communities, about our plan
that we have to get this done. And yet our
decision makers either don't have the gumption or don't feel
(47:05):
the need to listen to all of these voices. It
begs the question what or who is stopping them. And
this is a quote from Marlene Engelhorn as a co
founder of this little thing called tax me. Now, she's
one of the heirs to the B A. S F
Chemical company. Uh, it's a huge fortune four point something
(47:27):
billion dollars of which she gets, you know, a portion,
but it's going to be many, many millions of dollars.
And this is someone coming out and saying like I'm
gonna just be receiving this money from you know, my family,
Please tax me like a lot. I think her quote
in a different u, in a different place where that
I've found said, tax me nine of that money. I
(47:50):
don't like. I don't need that money. I didn't make
that money, put it to good use. But I think
the big question to you listening right now is giving
it to your government wherever you live the best use
of that money. That's the question. Yeah, it's a great question.
To Matt, that's the one. I think that's one of
the big ones that we keep coming back to. You know,
(48:12):
maybe a lot of innovation and success comes from reframing
the way we ask a question or look at a problem.
So without burning down the house or touching any third
rails or making anybody salty with us, maybe money is
the problem. Maybe things likely is that whole free market
(48:36):
economy man like you know, not to you know, I look,
and it works for a lot of people, but there
are limits to what good it can do and what
ill it can cause. Or maybe there aren't limits to
what ill it can cause. But certainly feels like there's
too much control in the hands of the super wealthy.
And I think this sort of cinches it. The fact
(48:58):
that we can't make something like this work. Well, hey,
we'll see maybe maybe the folks that Davos solved it all.
And by the time you're hearing this episode, we're in
a utopia because this next week, yeah, we don't know,
because like you, we can't go to Davos, and we
don't get to choose who does get to go to Davos,
(49:19):
and that is yet another inherently problematic thing about it.
But again, we can't question their motives. I think that's
we can question them, we can interrogate them, but we
can't say for sure what those motivations truly are our
house since here they may be. But it would be
a better world if there was less wealth inequality, not
(49:40):
no inequality at this point, it's like less just fewer billionaires.
I love that old meme. It's always stuck with me,
where they said, what you what we should do is
put a limit on capitalism. If you make if you
get to the point where you make a billion dollars,
you get like a printed out plaque that says you won,
(50:02):
and then you gotta go start over. You know what
I mean. Let's disincentivize becoming a billionaire. That's like you
get to the end of a great video game and
you can't keep going. You want to play again, You're
back to level one, never gonna happen. Well, hey, tell
us what you think about all this stuff. Should serial killers,
(50:23):
you know, convicted ones, get to go to war if
they just want to? God's a weird one, Ben, That's
that's so messed up? Uh? Should should AI generated art
have to deal with copyright? Oh my god, what are
we gonna do? Or should you know, the ultra rich
just get text to oblivion or sky rim or wherever. Hey,
(50:46):
I'm not saying it should even be too oblivion, you know,
at the very least, just like, let's dispense with all
the loopholes. It's it's it's it's costing us money. Well,
we want to hear your thoughts, and as always, we
greatly appreciate every buddy taking the time to check in.
Let us know what is going on in your neck
of the global woods. Talk to us about these ideas,
(51:10):
talk to us about episodes you'd like us to cover
in the future. We can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
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(51:30):
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(51:51):
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(52:18):
stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Grading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is all. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis
code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. We're going to some strange
places today, folks were going to the very heights of
(00:48):
global wealth. There's some interesting statements that came out of Davos.
We're going to some very dark places related to the
ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but not ut in the way
you would expect. We're also touching on the horrifying stories
of serial murders. And before we do any of that,
(01:10):
shout out to all our conspiracy realists in the crowd,
many of whom are artists. You have written to us
and talk to us in person about the ongoing conversation
regarding art and ownership. UH and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. Yeah, well, um,
(01:34):
we're we're kind of at this point now where the rubber,
as they say, meets the road, and that usually comes
in the form of lawsuits. We've been talking about this
stuff for a while now as to you know, how
these fun little kind of curiosities like generating yourself a
cool um you know, cartoony avatar one that looks like
(01:54):
you're in Lord of the Rings or like a Greek
god or whatever is super fun and everything, but also
how you're a set jually paying for the privilege of
training these AI algorithms. Um with what was the one
that was doing the little little guys? Uh, Lenza, Yeah,
Lenza was a big popular one, had a big moment,
a company that's been around for a while but only
has really kind of started to make ways with this
(02:17):
rash of just you know, virtual selfie posts that have
been actually learned about it from a from super producer
Alexis code name Doc holiday Uh and asked her what
the thing was called and she told me and I
immediately fed it all kinds of information and pictures to
get these cool images. One for me when from my
kid and went from my kids mom um, only to
be told by a very savvy friend of mine and
(02:39):
the show Matt riddle. Uh, hey, buddy, h f y,
I be careful with that stuff. You're basically just paying
for the privilege of training their AI. UM. So, when
you're training in AI in terms of like image recognition,
feeding an actual photographs, that's one thing. But the esthetics
that these AI s are generating are often trained with
(03:00):
actual art, with actual stuff that's on the Internet from
folks like Friends of the Show, an illustrator of the
stuff they don't want you to know book uh. Nick
Turbot Benson who actually did one of these UM for
the rapper Killer Mike UM and actually was very shocked
to realize that the aesthetic that the thing spit out
of Killer Mike looked remarkably similar to a an image
(03:24):
that he generated, you know, he created generated, He's a
he's a human. He created an image of Killer Mike
forso run the Jewels Materials poster or you know, a
T shirt or something like that. UM. And this is
not uncommon. This is being noticed, you know, across the
board by artists saying, hey, uh, the aesthetics of of
of some of these things like mid Journey UM deviant Art,
(03:46):
which has an art generating algorithm Stability AI um and
and others eerily similar to some stuff that I've done
or my colleagues have done. And we know that a
big thing about these as, as you've mentioned several times,
been his specificity. Whether it's you know, like a chat
bought like like GPT chat or whatever, it's about saying
something something in the style of with lighting similar to
(04:08):
So it really is all about giving an information that
it can kind of ape, you know, like whether it
be UM actually in the style of saying Andy Warhol
or maybe our Cromb or some artists like Michell Michelle
boskiat you can do that, and it does that, But
how does it do that. It does that by looking
for examples of that artist's work. Um And while those
are big names, uh and and and many you know,
(04:30):
like working artists aren't going to have names that big.
But the nature of being a working artist is that
a lot of your stuff, whether it be through clients
that you've had over the years or you know, examples
on your website of your work, that stuff is out
there on the open Internet. Uh. And that is the
kind of information these algorithms are scraping to feed their
generative capabilities. You know. For this stuff. Uh. So we
(04:53):
talked about lawsuits. There is a class action lawsuit accusing Stability, AI,
d v An Art, and mid Journey of violations of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d m c A.
I'm gonna read a little bit from an article on
Kotaku uh detailing some of the allegations. The lawsuit alleges
(05:14):
direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement related to forgeries, violations
of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violation of class members
rights to publicity, breach of contract related to deviant art
terms of services, and various violations of California's unfair competition laws.
Um Matthew Butterick is one of the lawyers representing the class.
(05:36):
This is a case that was filed in San Francisco courts,
and it's super super interesting because the chatter kind of is,
you know, this could set precedent for or against the
interests of these artists, right because if it's struck down
and it turns out that this is not in fact
(05:57):
copyright infringement, and then they're not actually being ripped off
directly in a way that's protected by law, then these
artists are forgiving me shoot out of luck. Uh, and
then they they're gonna have to take a whole another
tech here. Um. You know, we've talked about the interesting
aspects of AI are using in conjunction with humans that
generate art, you know, as sort of another tool. But
(06:19):
when you think about a lot of the things, for example,
these types of portraits that we're talking about, a lot
of artists make their make their bread and butter doing
these kinds of portraits at comic cons or what have you.
You know, with with fan art, you know of various
characters and things that they they sell to to make money.
And this really does you know, if someone could just
feed a couple of pictures into an algorithm and generate
(06:40):
something for five bucks, why would they pay an artist
five hundred bucks you know to do something. I mean,
I have answers to that. It's a hypothetical question, but
you know it is a question nonetheless, and there's a
lot of people that won't pay the five hundred that
would rather just have the the neat you know, avatar
for a couple of bucks. Um Stability AI and mid
Journey or probably too you may have heard of. Mid
(07:01):
Journey is probably one of the crazier ones where a
lot of interesting artists are using mid journey to create
kind of weird, psychedelic, you know, sci fi landscapes and
very interesting things that maybe don't exist in the world. UM.
So you may have seen these kinds of images posted.
A lot of them are actually being animated. There's there's
ways of using this AI stuff to generate these morphing
(07:23):
kind of animated images where you obviously like lots of
images were combined. They're kind of morphing from one to
the other, and it's got a certain look to it.
You can kind of tell right away that that's what
you're looking at. UM. Deviant Art, on the other hand,
has been around for a long time and it's more
of like an art kind of community and portfolio for artists. UM.
But it also has an algorithm or like an AI
(07:45):
art generator thing that it's been pushing out. So this
is um, you know, naming all of these companies in
this class action lawsuits. So that's its own thing. And
that's interesting because again if it if the suit does
not go the way of the artists, and this could
crack the gates wide open for even more of this
kind of thing to say, oh, it's just it's not
(08:06):
actually stealing anybody's intellectual property. It's just using things that
are freely available on the Internet, and it's determined that
the work being generated are completely unique. Um. Whether or
not you you you would you would argue with that
point or not. Um. Another I think even more interesting
development here is that Getty Images are also suing um.
(08:32):
Because we know Getty Images is a very litigious company.
First and foremost, you have to license their thousands and
thousands and thousands of images, and they are not cheap. Um.
You know, they go to image about every you know,
step and repeat kind of red carpet events. So there's
tons of celebrity images, tons of archival images, all of
this kind of stuff, and they are uh, you know,
(08:53):
stock photos is what they're Um. They are suing Stability
AI or accusing. I think the suit has been filed yet,
but a press release came out before apparently Stability AI
was informed officially of the lawsuit, and they say, I'm
just gonna read what Getty Images has to say. Getty
Images believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors. Accordingly,
(09:17):
Getty Images provided licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes
related to training artificial intelligence systems in a manner that
respects personal and intellectual property rights. Stability AI did not
seek any such license from Getty Images, and instead, we
believe chose to ignore viable licensing options and longstanding legal
(09:37):
protections in pursuit of their stand alone commercial interests, to
which stability AI told CNN, we don't know anything about this.
We're hearing it for the first time in the press
and we find it a little odd. That's how we
heard about it. Quote. We're still awaiting the service of
any documents. Should we receive them, we will comment appropriately.
And they did. Getty Images in their their official statement
(10:01):
over on their newsroom, they did confirm that they have
commenced those legal proceedings, so they are under they are
underway as we as we record today. And this is
what's funny about this story, know as it reminds me,
um Matt, you probably remember back in the day we
had to when when we were much smaller, scrappier outfit,
(10:23):
we had to have the serious, like family dinner table,
hard conversations about how many photos from getty we could
afford to use. And it got acrimonious at times, well
because our company wasn't huge, but it was a big
enough company to where we paid a certain amount of
money for a certain number of images per month, right
(10:44):
per pay period, and we had several video shows in production.
So Ben and I at the time would have to say, Okay, look,
we we've got this episode coming up on the War
on Drugs. I think we're gonna need I'm estimating seven
images that we need from d so uh if we
could please please have those And that's how it would go,
(11:05):
because we would have to pay for each one of
those images that we licensed to put in our video.
Why the stuff they don't want you to know get
all the thumbnails? To your point, Matt is, I don't
know the answer that because I've never really had to
mess with us too much. I imagine the licensing fee
pay depends on the size of your audience and also
the use of said image and how long it's going
(11:25):
to live and in what medium is going to live.
It gets a little different when you're dealing with larger accounts.
So for a company like at the time, House Stuff
Works that had multiple shows, multiple things going on, it's
and it's it's tougher to like estimate an audience. So
I don't know exactly what happened. I wasn't high enough
Ben and I were not high enough in the company
(11:47):
to know exactly what the you know, contract looked like
at the time. But that's certainly the way of function.
You pay for a certain number of images you license,
and their perpetual worldwide licenses so they last further anywhere.
But dude, if you go on Stable diffusions website, look
at their f a Q and you notice that there's
(12:07):
a direct question on here, what is the copyright on
images created through Stable Diffusion Online? This is the Stability
AI generator And their answer is images created through Stable
Diffusion Online are fully open source, explicitly following under the
c c O one point zero Universal Public Domain Dedication.
(12:29):
What a great time to be a lawyer, lead conspiracy realist.
If you're on the Getty case, tell us what kind
of boat you're gonna buy, no doubt, because this really
is like brave New World kind of territory. This hasn't
been dealt with. This is when this will be decided
one way or the other. And y'all I asked to
you both, any ideas as to why Getty might not
(12:51):
care for this big picture. Sure, they've converted there the
images that they make people pay tons of mone for
into public domain fragments, right, they fragmented them into public domain.
I don't know what you'd call it um instances. You
(13:12):
could call it about that, but would wouldn't you have
to show though that it was like, literally, here's this
face from this Getty image. I mean, I would hope
that stability AI would not be so stupid as to
have it be like a cop cut and paste mishmash
of Getty images. The idea is that it's creating a
new face out of a bunch of other faces, and
you can't tell from the end result what went into it.
(13:34):
It will be like the fair use argument, Right, I
am altering your thing, I'm making it new by using
parts of it. But they don't even know which images
were used to feed the particular output that there. There's
no way of tracking that to my understanding. You know,
maybe there is, and maybe they could request that, but
that also might be a moot point, because it doesn't
(13:55):
really matter what goes into it if there's no recognizable
portion of the original in the end product. That's a
solid argument. But let's let me also advance just a
very off the cuff freestyle conspiracy here. Uh. I would
say that it would be very helpful for Getty Images
to have a bad guy or an antagonist to fight
(14:15):
against because they have, uh, they have tons of lawsuits
against them for something like forty seven thousand photos. And uh.
The photographers who took against Getty, Yeah, against Getty for compensation.
They're saying, hey, can you pay us because you're using
(14:37):
my work? Right? Uh? And I you know, I know
you guys know about licensing Getty, So run the jewels
for me, right, cough up my my slice of the
pie here. Uh. There was a I think in particular,
there was a one billion dollar lawsuit uh from a
photographer named Carol high Smith. Uh. And this dates back
(15:02):
to six I don't know if any of these things
have been resolved, but I'm just saying, like, Getty is
a huge company. They're huge force in the field, and
we can't confuse them with some kind of shining paragon
on a hill. It's just weird to me that they're
getting accused of some of the same stuff they're accusing
and it's it's the it's the pot calling the AI
kettle black. You know, I mean no and no question
(15:24):
and honestly too. I mean they have a vested interest
in defending or or at least um fighting against this
technology just lock stock and barrel, because if you can
just type in keywords and generate a copyright free stock
image without having to license something, Um, that's a huge
part of their business that's gone. You know. Shutter Stock,
(15:46):
who's a Getty competitor, they've leagued up with Open Ai,
was the company behind Dolly um and also uh the
AI chat bot chat GPT, So they're thinking ahead because
they know it's an bitable. I would argue shutter Stock
is also a newer, you know, more kind of like
with the Times company. Getty has been around for ages, uh,
(16:07):
and they've got legacy skin in the game, so I
think they're kind of looking out for their best interests
in terms of like slowing down the spreading tide of
AI image generation one of the biggest parts of Getty's
I don't know the reason why they're used so much,
I guess is because they have those creative images, which
(16:28):
were the ones we would use for our show often. Well,
they have a whole other set of images which are
meant for journalism purposes. So that's that's that's a different portion.
I mean they couldn't. That would be a whole another
thing about right to of publicity and all that stuff.
If like, all of a sudden, you just generated an
AI image of a celebrity that never actually took place,
that celebrity could then sue you, you know what I mean. Maybe,
(16:51):
I mean it's it's brave New what it's a it's
brave new water in a brave it's real deep water
in a brave new world. That's the way we say it.
But keep my stumble in there at least arshly, doc
because that's what makes us human, right, or that's what
makes us appear to be human. Uh. Two big notes.
I think we should say this current legal beef. At
least from my understanding, he's taken place in London. Yeah,
(17:12):
the app rather than the US laws. It's legal to
scrape the web however you wish in the US. Oh.
I mean, there's there's so many things to discuss here,
and let's keep it brief. And I think we definitely
have another update for this stuff coming in the very
near future um, and I do want to just close
by by referencing a thing that you found where we
just mentioned chat GPT. Um it can it's like not
(17:35):
image generation, it's texts and content generation. And somebody apparently
sent the Australian incredible songwriter singer artist Nick Cave some
song lyrics that chat GPT had generated in the style
of Nick Cave, and uh he had a thing or
two to say about it that I think you could
apply across the board to this stuff. I understand that
(17:57):
chat GPT is in its infancy, but perhaps that is
the emerging horror of AI, that it will forever be
in its infancy, as it will always have further to
go in the direction is always forward, always faster. It
can never be rolled back or slowed down as it
moves us towards a utopian future maybe or are total destruction.
Who can possibly say which? Judging by the song quote
(18:18):
in the style of Nick Cave, though it doesn't look
good the apocalypse as well on its way, This song sucks.
I recommend reading the uh, the the full Nick Cave letter.
And Nick, if you're listening nice nicely, we're gonna take
a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor
and let me back with some more strange news, and
(18:43):
we have returned. Quick heads up, folks, if you are
listening with family members, if you have kids in the
audience today, you may want to fast forward about fifteen
minutes or so. Uh. The following story may not be
appropriate for all list nurse, but it caught our collective eye.
(19:04):
The war in Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine, continues apace,
and sadly here in the West, a lot of people
are encountering some degree of fatigue about it. Right, you
probably find yourself reading fewer stories about what's going down.
People can just kind of become acclimated to the most
(19:29):
terrible stuff, the most terrible news, and we see this
happen all the time. Part of the reason it's such
a problem, at least in the US, is because of
the way the news cycle is uh designed to maximize advertising.
It's true. Sorry, Uh. You may have heard our earlier
(19:50):
episode on a mercenary army that is completely, totally, not
officially a part of Russia. Russia's military. It's just run
by a close friend of Vladimir Putin. It's called the
Wagner Group, and they do a lot of things that
ordinary or official armies would not do or should not do.
(20:13):
And recently, as the war and the invasion have continued,
have dragged on, and have even escalated, the Russian state
has encountered a ton of problems. It turns out that
the Cold War legend of the great Dangerous Russian Army
may have been largely a legend, at least embellished. The
(20:36):
technology is old, a lot of it's not working. They're
making some very what appeared to be very basic mistakes
that ordinarily professional offecial military simply would not make, Like
unsecured calms really day one stuff. Uh. And you guys
heard about the conscription fears and all the Russian men
(20:58):
of possible conscription trying to get out of the country.
I've heard this, and I've also well, wait, the conscription
fears because they're leaving because they're worried about being sent
off to the Ukraine front. Correct. Is this like being
drafted or is this different? They're already drafted. They're just
like dormant essentially, and they'll be like called into action
(21:19):
or activated as it were. Yeah, they're fleeing conscription or
being drafted. Uh. The phrase that you'll hear to describe
this is called mobilization. So yes, so several times Putin
has come out and it's come out in the news.
They've been taking folks who are not, you know, normally
(21:40):
soldiers by trade, and just like the US did in Vietnam,
they they're drafting them. So as this um. Actually this
is happening in two but very towards the end of
the year especially, it's been tough for me to know
how much of that is propaganda on the Western side,
Like looking on they're even getting their prisoners to go
(22:03):
and forcing these people to fight. You know, I don't
know how much of a really good point. I thought
the same thing. It feels like something you would say,
right if you were doing information. Sure, and I think
that's a really that's a really good point. But we
have to note that per Russia's own reporting, over two
(22:23):
hundred thousand people have were already drafted into their armed
forces in by October, so a lot of people were
trying to leave. And at the same time, the Russian
state is lowering it's standards right for who can be accepted,
who would qualify you know what I mean? You see
(22:45):
this happen in a lot of militaries in the past
and the Wager group. Do please check out that that
episode because it is it is disturbing. It's very true story.
But now these big variables lead us to this very
disturbing thing. I want to talk about the most prolific
(23:09):
serial murderer in Russia as a guy named Mikhail Popekov.
He is alive, he is in prison. He was called
the Angarsk maniac, the werewolf. He is serving two life
sentences for the murder of eight three women. And this
(23:31):
includes later confessions he gave after his arrest and trial
and imprisonment. Uh. And these are women who were between
the ages of eighteen and fifty. They were murdered in tortured,
then murdered in horrific ways, and then he defiled their bodies.
(23:53):
This happened probably between all the way to He said
that he was doing this because he wanted to quote
cleanse the city of prostitutes his words, not ours. And
because there have been some deals allowing criminals or prisoners,
(24:16):
people on the wrong side of the law to join
the Russian military in exchange for a pardon. Pope gov
has put his name in the figurative hat State Television
interviewed him recently and he voiced his He voiced his desire.
He said, look, I was a conscript in the Red
(24:38):
Army back in the day. I have experience with radio
and electronic equipment. I would like to join the Russian
military and the invasion of Ukraine. And the thing about this,
this situation is he's not making some crazy pitch some
(24:59):
crazy and saying pitch. Forty thousand convicts have been freed
for serving in the army, and that's to the point
about propaganda. That's a number we were also able to confirm. Wow,
I don't you guys, tell me what you think. In
my mind, if you are going to have a frontline
force that's meant to be a force, wedge that pushes
(25:21):
into areas right and like clears out areas um secures them,
you probably want some of the most hardened dare I say,
bloodthirsty individuals that you can possibly find. Like that feels
like smart strategy to me. They also have to be
competent enough to understand and follow orders right and then
(25:41):
carry out like pretty sophisticated tactics. But I don't know,
is it weird that I feel like having like suicide
squad style crews going through on the front lines might
not be the worst idea. No, I think it's a
it's a tariff ying proposition. But it seems like smart maneuvering.
(26:03):
Is there is this a real possibility? Unclear? That's why
it's at a That's why it's kind of at a crossroads,
because you know, to the point about the suicide squads
would depend upon the nature of the crime, would it not,
now for someone who is a proven necrophile, for someone Yeah,
(26:25):
for someone who is proven to have murdered not because
they were, you know, attempting to steal food to feed themselves,
or not because it was a matter of self defense
for someone like that. We also have to consider the
(26:46):
the other ethical angle. Even if they are being treated
as cannon fodder by the Wagner group, which seems to
be the case, then is this not letting them out
in the wild to do the thing they enjoy Again,
I know, I think that's exactly what it is. I'm worried.
(27:06):
I suppose that it feels like a good strategy to them.
Does that make sense? It feels it's like the inmates
are running the asylum kind of situation. Right where it's
just like let the floodgates open, you know, big worst case,
you know, I don't know it matches with the horror
stories that are coming out of Ukraine right now, where
battles are being fought, right and the aftermath that we
(27:28):
discussed on the show previously, when the Wagner group and
other groups, you know, leave a town after that's essentially
been sacked, and the horror stories of the exact same
kinds of things that were that this guy did. I suppose.
To be fair to the Russian side of this equation,
we do need to point out that he has not
(27:48):
received an official statement from Russia. The Russian media, you know,
the state media was allowed to show this interview, but
that's not the same thing as them allowing him to
join the front lines there. He is older, he is
fifty eight years old. Um, Like a lot of these monsters,
(28:08):
you can't trust what they're saying. They might make grandiose statements.
So we don't know too much about his specific military experience,
not that that matters in this case. We do know
he was a police officer and uh, as we've seen
in similar cases, he used his official position to further
enable his crimes. Well, I mean, it's not like Putin
(28:32):
is fighting much of a pr you know, war. He's
already kind of, you know, emerged from this situation looking
kind of like a supervillain. So is there really much
of a leap between what his images now and how
this would tarnish it further. I don't know. It's the
question hypothetical. It's a good question, and the really the
(28:55):
only reason this guy is alive right now is because
there's a formal suspension of capital punishment in Russia. And
you know, unless you run into the wrong window, it
seems that the third story windows of Russia have become
a little bit more dangerous than the courts. Uh, maybe
(29:17):
we can do an episode on that. But this gets
me because you know, war is so fun, it's such
a fundamentally horrific thing. We hear these stories sometimes about
people who are on the wrong side of the law
trying to help the public good as a way of
reducing their own sentence right or getting better circumstances and incarceration.
(29:42):
I'm thinking about convicts fighting wildfires, for instance, and those
those convicts out west in the United States have no
doubt saved lives, but where is the line here? You
know what I mean? Especially knowing these forces are encounter
orne civilians in Ukraine, I feel like this guy is
(30:03):
the titular line, if not, if not, way way over it.
You know, you don't get a nickname like the werewolf
for nothing, and especially considering that, uh, he was able
to elude law enforcement for twenty years, probably because he
(30:23):
knew some of the standard operating procedures from his own
time working in law enforcement. So this is someone who
if they get out, they could stay out. It would
be kind of hard to catch them if they got
a chance, if they got a chance to ghost. And
forgive me for not fully remembering exactly how suicide squad worked.
Wasn't that sort of a secret program. It's not really
(30:46):
something you'd publicize, right because you want them to be
able to be disavowed if they're captured or killed or whatever.
It would be more like a black ops. So publicizing
doing this probably not be smart. It would just be
the doing of it, and to have that, but then
kind of do it, you know, on the down, the
on the low low. I don't know, what do you
(31:08):
guys think? Is there a benefit to publicizing it? I
would think not. I'm just wondering. This is obviously the
guy who's running his mouth saying I want to do this.
It's not the same as you know putin saying we've
we've decided to start a program that's going to release
all of our most hardened psychotic criminals from prison to
fight the good fight. I mean, if you can survive
(31:29):
in um a goulag on the hind lens of Russia,
then you are you have become a very dangerous person.
So there there is also it. You could you could
see a psi op edge to it, you know, announcing
a very different version of this, like how inglorious bastards
in that heavily fictionalized World War two thing, they their
(31:50):
existence became uh or took on a psychological aspect because
people were terrified. In d C's suicide Squad, some of
those villains have superpowers. If someone had a superpower, you
would definitely, to your ability can script them. But with
those suicide squads, UH are operating on pain of death.
(32:13):
It's kind of like UH. In various military conflicts in
ages past, you would put the you would put the
people who were inept or didn't want to be there,
as the first wave sometimes and you would have the
real out and find out people right behind them ready
to kill them if they turned around. Yeah. But if
(32:36):
I'm not mistaken, even some of those suicide squatters with
their like explosive net collars and and minders still got away. Yeah,
because you get to have a sequel, you know for sure. Uh.
And at this point we're gonna pause here because this
touches on a lot of other things. It touches on
the history of outfits like the French Foreign Legion, It
(32:57):
touches on the gray market of mercenary or and we
have some fellow conspiracy realists who are likely acquainted with
with some aspect of that world. We want to hear
your thoughts, folks. What do you think the line is?
Should criminals, uh, criminals be permitted to join into a
(33:20):
war in pursuit of a pardon? Does it depend on
what kind of crimes they committed? Do you think that
Putin and co. Are gonna play ball with a monstrous,
monstrous individual. Let us know, we're gonna pause for a
word from our sponsor. We're not gonna end on such
a dark note. Never fear, We're gonna talk about the future,
(33:49):
and we're back and guys strap in we are going
for a real trip all the way over to Geneva,
Switzerland because we're gonna visit the PAP PAP World Economic Forum. Yes, yes,
(34:10):
the Zuck is here. Probably, I'm not sure if he is.
I'm sure he is. How he's sucking up. He's out there,
he's out there. I was watching it earlier today because
it's happening right now as we're recording this episode on
the week of what is it? It's January eighteenth right now,
but all this week the World Economic Forum is happening
in their lives, streaming all these things. So I got
(34:32):
to listen to John Kerry earlier talking about ways to
fix climate change. Is there, freaking yeah Kemp, Governor of Georgia,
Bryant Kemp, who's not exactly known for his like progressive
ways of thinking, which is sort of what we associate
places like the World Economic Forum with, but also it's
(34:54):
just kind of where the elite meet to have kind
of closed door deal making sessions. Yeah. I hope George
Bush was there too, fellow skull and bonesman with R
I like how I like how down home in Texan
folksy that Connecticut born psionic So folksy, I like it
(35:15):
to ben um. All right, Well, we are going there
to discuss an open letter that was written recently to
all of the attendees of Davos, the World Economic Forum,
mostly the government officials and high level executives that were attending,
which is most of the people that were there, at
least the speakers. Check out our episode two where we
(35:37):
we talked about some of the security that goes down
to Tacos. It's kind of nuts weird stuff. Yeah, check
it out for sure. If you don't know much about it,
it's worth your time. But there's a reason this open
letter was targeted to them and was just put out
right now as the World Economic Forum is occurring. It's
because this The message of this open letter is, Hey,
(36:00):
we writing this letter. We're a bunch of multi millionaires
and even a few billionaires, and we want you government
officials to tax us tax us right now. Tax us harsh,
like tax us so hard, Just tax the crap out
of us. But in order to save the world. That's
(36:23):
the concept. Tax us and the rest of the ultra
wealthy to save the world. Now that sounds like a
tall milkshake. Um, like a delicious tall milkshake. But it
could be a real possible answer to kick starting some
of the things that can't happen right now because they
simply can't get funding. Um, So let's talk about it, guys.
(36:47):
Let's talk about this letter. What it is and what's
what's said in here and could it actually work? So
I shared the open letter with you, guys. I don't
know if you want to go through any of it
and actually read some of it out. Man. I really
appreciate this one because we talked a little bit about
the nature of rhetoric in our episode on skepticism recently,
(37:08):
and so these kind of declarations or manifestose Uh, they
always start with at least one thing everybody can agree on.
We're living in an age of extremes, and they talk
about how just like absolutely terrible the world is right
now for so many people, and how it's gonna get worse.
(37:29):
But then they start talking about wealth extraction, the transfer
of wealth from the majority to a incredibly powerful elite.
And it's stuff that you hear other billionaires mentioned before.
Warren Buffetts talked about it. I think um he mentioned
he pays more taxes than his secretary. I just I
(37:51):
don't know. You can see how people wouldn't trust the statement. Sure,
and and the concept on its face it seems very
kumbaya and like interest, you know, like something they don't
really would be a good idea. But doesn't it And
this is sag and I think it's not true for
the for the for the opposite, does it Wouldn't this
kind of require the consent of the super rich essentially? Well,
(38:14):
that's maybe the whole thing. And that's why I wanted
to bring it to to today's episode is because we
have in this case two and five plus because you
can go in here and sign it as a wealthy
person and add your name to the list. So maybe
a lot of people have added to it since it
was posted not that long ago. But the concept that
(38:36):
there are at least two hun or five ultra wealthy
people who want to do this, uh, that's a good sign.
How do you get enough of the ultra wealthy people
or enough of the organizations that represent the ultra wealthy
people to also sign up for this right to where
it could actually occur because those ultra wealthy people have
a lot of sway with the folks. This open letters
(38:58):
written to the political leaders who are attending Davos. Right,
So it really is as you said been in a way.
Just here's this statement. We want you to know that
we ultra wealthy people I don't know are we see
you non ultra wealthy people, and we stand with you,
(39:18):
and we'll give you our money if the political leaders
make us right. That's the thing. There's not a statement
about the tremendous amount of influence that billionaires can have
on government right through any number of proxies or lobbies.
And that's why I mean I use the word consent
(39:40):
because it's not like anyone's asking me how much tax
I want to pay? And technically, you know, you shouldn't
have to ask the super rich how much tax they
should have to pay. But they can also literally kind
of wreck the economy by pulling all their money out
and you know, moving to another country or something. I
don't know what what what what's the concern with pissing
off the super rich in the scenario, that's probably part
(40:02):
of it. I'm taking their industries elsewhere. I don't know what.
What's like what what leverage do they have? What leverage
does super rich have you know what I mean, Like,
they operate companies in the United States, the obviously also
have overseas divisions of of their companies, and their wealth
can be held overseas and you know, offshore accounts and
(40:22):
things like that. But if if the government were to
say we're going to tax you, the super rich, what
would be the super richest move to say the hell
you are move their money? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I'm making sure I wasn't missing anything and then and
then punish the people responsible for making those moves, right,
get them out of office, hear them in public. Uh,
(40:45):
And I'm asking bone headed questions because I just want
to make sure that we're all on the same page,
fellow bone heads. But no, it's it's interesting. So this
is almost like a petition, kind of an open letter
where they've got some co sign from a handful, But
that wouldn't be enough. It would need to be all
of them, right, Yeah, I I don't know. You would
just have to There would have to be a political
movement where enough supporters who could elect somebody support this
(41:09):
movement right to where the political leader would then support
it because that person knows they can get elected again
for another term no matter what the ultra wealthy people say.
But those ultra wealthy people can sway an election no
matter how many supporters they have. So it's just like,
I think that's I think the risk involved as someone
(41:30):
who's going to be a political representative, whether that's you know,
in a legislature or parliament or you know, prime minister
or president, I think the calculated risk is too high
to go all in on something like this. Yeah, let's
also note that there's a huge problem with the idea
of philanthropy, right the wealthy class. And it is true,
(41:52):
the wealthy class has done a wonderful job gaslighting huge
swaths of the global population into thinking that it's not
good for people to pay their fair share of taxes
and then work towards something that collectively improves the country.
It's good to trust one or two very rich people
(42:14):
to throw money at something they have identified as a problem.
And remember these are some of the most powerful people
on the planet. They are not elected. They choose who
you get to elect. But ben don't those contributions also
serve as tax breaks? They do? They do? Uh, they
service tax breaks. And then the question is do you
(42:36):
think like there's some really interesting discourse on this. I
wouldn't be fair to both sides because look, if you
live in the United States, you might say, well, okay,
put yourself in the mind of Bill Gates. You say,
I could start a charity and I can try to
eradicate things like malaria or polio. Or I can take
all the money I would have done and I can
(42:58):
give it to Uncle Sam and say, hey, I know
you spend a ton of money every year on a
military that goes around the world, but I'd like you
to think about malaria. You can't just like we, Like
you said earlier that we can't choose how much you
want to pay in taxes. We mentioned this one of
our tax activism episodes. You also can't dictate how your
(43:20):
money is spent, not direct and I always say, I
have no bloody idea where my tax money goes. Certainly
isn't into my roads and bridges, certainly not paying for
my kid's education necessarily, or you know, healthcare. I agree
with what we're talking about here. I have to mention
a bit of information from Oxfam. Just if you don't
(43:42):
know about them, you can check them out. Oh x
f A m. They found a couple of things that
I want to talk about. This is from the Guardian.
They said food and energy companies had more than doubled
their profits in two So food and energy companies doubled
their profits. They paid out two hundred and fifty seven
(44:03):
billion two shareholders at a time when more than eight
hundred million people we're going hungry. So that's that isn't
saying shame on you for making money. It is look
at the disparity between these two groups, right, that's inequality
within our society. Is there something we can do about that? Uh,
(44:25):
let's just go a little bit further here. Only four
cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes,
and half the world's billionaires lived in countries with zero
inheritance tax, which we've talked about on this show before, um,
which is on the money that gets handed down right
from grandmother or a mother to a child, father to
(44:48):
a child. That money doesn't get taxed often. A tax
of up to five on the world's multimillionaires and billionaires
could raise one point seven brillion US dollars a year,
which theoretically would be enough to lift two billion people
out of poverty if you could put all that money
(45:10):
into a fund that was specifically focused on creating a
plan to do that, which goes to your point, ben
very difficult to make a government, you know, take a
certain amount of money, siphon it into one plan, and
then make that plan come to fruition. Yeah, and there's
there's this other issue too that keeps I keep coming
back to and pardon me if this sounds a little
(45:32):
bit dismissive or cynical. Can't they just not put money
in offshore tax havens? Can't you just stop paying industry
of people to help you avoid the taxes and the
system that you inherently support, Like why can't you just
do that? Now? Who? Who looked around and said, well,
(45:54):
I can't fire my wealth estate management folks. They kept
me out of the Panama papers. What I need is
to write a letter yea, yeah, which that's but it's cynical.
We we haven't met these people, so we can't speak, Uh,
we can't speak with certitude about their motivations, their ambitions,
(46:19):
or their sincerity. But still it feels like it might
be kind of a talk is cheap situation. I'm just
being honest, No, I agree that it feels that way.
I want to give you, guys, one quote from an
individual that's fascinating to me. There's Uh, this person's story
is complicated, way more complicated than you will understand. After
reading one article, I recommend reading several. I'll tell you
(46:43):
who they are after I read the quote quote. The
whole world, economists and millionaires alike can see the solution
that is staring us all right in the face. We
have to tax the ultra rich if we care about
the safety of democracy, about our communities, about our plan
that we have to get this done. And yet our
decision makers either don't have the gumption or don't feel
(47:05):
the need to listen to all of these voices. It
begs the question what or who is stopping them. And
this is a quote from Marlene Engelhorn as a co
founder of this little thing called tax me. Now, she's
one of the heirs to the B A. S F
Chemical company. Uh, it's a huge fortune four point something
(47:27):
billion dollars of which she gets, you know, a portion,
but it's going to be many, many millions of dollars.
And this is someone coming out and saying like I'm
gonna just be receiving this money from you know, my family,
Please tax me like a lot. I think her quote
in a different u, in a different place where that
I've found said, tax me nine of that money. I
(47:50):
don't like. I don't need that money. I didn't make
that money, put it to good use. But I think
the big question to you listening right now is giving
it to your government wherever you live the best use
of that money. That's the question. Yeah, it's a great question.
To Matt, that's the one. I think that's one of
the big ones that we keep coming back to. You know,
(48:12):
maybe a lot of innovation and success comes from reframing
the way we ask a question or look at a problem.
So without burning down the house or touching any third
rails or making anybody salty with us, maybe money is
the problem. Maybe things likely is that whole free market
(48:36):
economy man like you know, not to you know, I look,
and it works for a lot of people, but there
are limits to what good it can do and what
ill it can cause. Or maybe there aren't limits to
what ill it can cause. But certainly feels like there's
too much control in the hands of the super wealthy.
And I think this sort of cinches it. The fact
(48:58):
that we can't make something like this work. Well, hey,
we'll see maybe maybe the folks that Davos solved it all.
And by the time you're hearing this episode, we're in
a utopia because this next week, yeah, we don't know,
because like you, we can't go to Davos, and we
don't get to choose who does get to go to Davos,
(49:19):
and that is yet another inherently problematic thing about it.
But again, we can't question their motives. I think that's
we can question them, we can interrogate them, but we
can't say for sure what those motivations truly are our
house since here they may be. But it would be
a better world if there was less wealth inequality, not
(49:40):
no inequality at this point, it's like less just fewer billionaires.
I love that old meme. It's always stuck with me,
where they said, what you what we should do is
put a limit on capitalism. If you make if you
get to the point where you make a billion dollars,
you get like a printed out plaque that says you won,
(50:02):
and then you gotta go start over. You know what
I mean. Let's disincentivize becoming a billionaire. That's like you
get to the end of a great video game and
you can't keep going. You want to play again, You're
back to level one, never gonna happen. Well, hey, tell
us what you think about all this stuff. Should serial killers,
(50:23):
you know, convicted ones, get to go to war if
they just want to? God's a weird one, Ben, That's
that's so messed up? Uh? Should should AI generated art
have to deal with copyright? Oh my god, what are
we gonna do? Or should you know, the ultra rich
just get text to oblivion or sky rim or wherever. Hey,
(50:46):
I'm not saying it should even be too oblivion, you know,
at the very least, just like, let's dispense with all
the loopholes. It's it's it's it's costing us money. Well,
we want to hear your thoughts, and as always, we
greatly appreciate every buddy taking the time to check in.
Let us know what is going on in your neck
of the global woods. Talk to us about these ideas,
(51:10):
talk to us about episodes you'd like us to cover
in the future. We can't wait to hear from you.
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(51:30):
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(51:51):
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(52:18):
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