September 9, 2026 • 37 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- The Republican convention
- Taliban patrolling in American vehicles with American weapons
- Humanity will be destroyed by AI
- Ethics when talking to animals
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the
George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Armstrong and Getty. And now, here's Armstrong and Getty. The
RNC is in full force in downtown Dallas.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
If you go downtown right now to the American Airlines Center,
which is where this is being held, it's a 20,000-seat
arena where the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars play.
And there is security fencing all around the arena. Streets
are shut down. Secret Service has set up security checkpoints. And,
you know, it feels like a full fledged presidential convention.
There's no official party business and there's no president or
(00:48):
vice president being nominated. What that means is that this
is really more of a pep rally.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So are the actual conventions ever since like 1972. So
I don't understand the knock on this midterm convention as
being just like a TV show pep race. Have you
have you been following conventions in the modern era? Who
was that halfwit? The decision's already made. The platform is meaningless.
(01:14):
It's just a bunch of speeches in a TV show
to try to get people all excited, which is fine.
You get to do that. And you either watch it
or not. I probably won't watch a second of this thing.
But I think it's a pretty decent idea. Why not?
Would it be a good response? Why not? And for
all the mockery on CNN and MSNBC where they're mocking it.
(01:35):
By the way, midterm conventions aren't a thing. I've heard
multiple times. I bet money the Democrats have one in
four years.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Having decided, wow, that got a lot of attention. was
on cable news every single night, well, every two nights,
and brought in a bunch of donor money. So they'll
have one in four years.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I would literally fight with my life to guard the
First Amendment, but I want it taken away from that gentleman,
Joe Lovinger of Bloomberg, for his idiotic insights, his non-insights.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So all of this is taking place with Americans rather
unhappy with the economy.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh, yeah, I was going to throw that into the
What I was saying, yeah. Trump's trying to change people's mood. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Although he's perhaps not the perfect messenger because a lot
of people blame Trump. His numbers are upside down on
practically every topic, including the economy. Now, a big share
of that is Democrats. And as they say, Trump could
cure cancer and they'd still aid him for it. He's
putting doctors out of work. So fair criticism. But Americans
(02:43):
are glum-ish. And as usual in the Wall Street Journal,
They throw out various statistics, like last month the country
added an impressive 162,000 jobs. Allegedly, those numbers are always revised.
The unemployment rate is low, correct? The stock market and
AI are making many people rich and boosting retirement savings,
yet surveys tell us Americans are still in a funk.
(03:05):
Their sour mood doesn't match up with what major indicators
say about how the U.S. economy is performing.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Because that's the way people make their decisions. Talking about
your average person. They make their decisions based on the
major indicators. You're sitting there, you're filling up your car
with gas. It's going to be about $ 200, depending on
where you live. And you just went through the grocery
store and it costs $ 150 for a tiny amount of
groceries and your car insurance and blah, blah, blah, all
the other things. But you're sitting there thinking about the...
(03:32):
unemployment rate is headed in the right direction, or the
S & P said 2%, blah, blah, blah. Fuck up, children.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Real factory investment is up 0.2%.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So it doesn't mean people are lying to themselves about
the experience of the economy, because the broad measures, they
point out, are missing how much Americans' costs have risen
since the pandemic, and many of them haven't kept up.
In fact, virtually nobody has kept up income-wise. And so
the University of Michigan measures consumer sentiment. It continues to
flirt with the lowest levels in its decades-long history. This
(04:09):
is the one we pointed out has gone from the
phone to the Internet. They swear that hasn't affected their results.
They worked very hard to make sure it didn't. I
find it difficult to believe that. They mention partisanship. I mean,
just the most bitter partisanship we've seen in quite a
long time.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I noticed that. Yeah. I saw that in the news somewhere.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Whether the stats are entirely accurate or not is kind
of beside the point. And they mentioned that the economy, again,
doesn't look bad. Gross domestic product grew 2.1% year over year.
Job growth has been decent. Unemployment rate has remained low.
But inflation remains trying. Consumer prices were up 3.4% on
the year in July. But it is much lower than
(04:53):
June 22 when it hit 9.1%. That is the truth
that lies. Inflation compounds. It's up 3.4% of that brand
new number that was 109.1%, and it just keeps going
and going.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
We're having this discussion, my whole family. So for one thing,
I'm there with my mom, dad, both my brothers, my kids,
and we got a couple of times on the question
of affordability. This word nobody had ever heard of until
the Democrats started bringing up affordability. We got on just
how expensive everything is. For my parents who are in
(05:35):
the winter of their lives or my brothers who are
roughly the same age as me or their kids. They're
out in the college world or whatever. Everything's so expensive
and everything like that. It's a topic people are actually
talking about. But clearly, as luckily my brothers do understand this.
Nobody seems to understand inflation, what it is or how
(05:56):
it works. True. How, after all these years of having
the inflation, have people not caught on? The rate of
inflation going down, I'm happy about it, but it doesn't
really help me when I go to the grocery store today.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Do you remember in high school where perhaps they taught
you about compound interest and how powerful that is over time?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Inflation works the same way, but in the other direction.
It compounds.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So here's the only statistic you really need to know.
And they say inflation is usually looked at by looking
at year-over-year changes in prices. But the more salient statistic
for many Americans is that consumer prices are 28% higher
than just before the pandemic. Oh, that reminds me.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Hanson, I asked you for some audio and I've not
seen it on the list. Most things are dang near 30%
more expensive than 2020. That is only six years ago.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
That is unbelievable. That's an unbelievable statistic. It's devastating.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
The audio that I asked for that apparently got lost
in the wash, we'll grab it later, was a number
of figures, including Joe Biden, while selling the Inflation Reduction Act,
saying 14 Nobel laureates say this is actually going.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
To cure inflation and bring it down. And they said
that over and over and over again. It's absolutely obscene. Well,
and then politicians of all stripes, and Trump, I think,
got elected on saying, I'm going to bring prices down.
And people, because they don't understand what inflation is, thinking
it's going to go back to the old prices, which
(07:33):
is just horrific.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
He said, I'm going to bring inflation down. That would
have been good, but incomplete. So in a way, he said, well,
not in a way, he clearly set himself up for.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Failure, rhetorically.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And failing we are in terms of consumer sentiment from
Trump's first term to this one. Republicans have dropped by
about a third their consumer sentiment. Independents by about 40%.
And Democrats similarly about 45% from Trump's first term when
(08:09):
even the Democrat numbers were decent. They were low because
they hated Trump, but they're pretty decent. So Again, the backdrop, oh,
that's right, I meant to say this before we get
to the conclusion. Let's see, according to data from payroll
processor ADP, so the prices have gone up 28% since
(08:31):
just before the pandemic. More than a third of workers'
wages did not keep up with inflation. I'm surprised that.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
It's that low, honestly. I have a new old theory
about elections and why one of the reasons I'm not
paying much attention to the midterm convention that's happening tonight.
But first, we need to tell you about Incogni, which
we have been using. And man, oh, man, oh, man,
(09:04):
just just last week, Incogni got a bunch of stuff
off the Internet that I didn't know was out there
that I'm so glad is no longer floating around out there.
Somewhere right now, a stranger is buying a list right
now of your information. Data brokers sell marketing lists named
suffering seniors or recently widowed or rural and barely making it.
(09:26):
All kinds of different information that floats around, gets sold,
and you don't want your name, phone number, address, age, income,
health problems, everything out there for people to see.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Hear, hear. And maybe they're just looking to scam you
and spam you in the normal way. Maybe they're looking
for your mom. Use Incogni. It automatically sends removal requests
to more than 420 data brokers and people search sites,
then keeps following up so you don't get quietly relisted.
Just go to Incogni.com slash Armstrong for 60% off. Your
private life should never be someone else's prospect list. incogni.com
(10:02):
slash armstrong they can't harm you if they can't find you.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
What i find so annoying about discussions about the midterms
and uh this convention everything like that is is acting
like It indicates something. So far, we haven't had an
election in a long time that indicates much. I think
probably because you need several in a row that indicates
a major shift of something toward a different attitude or
(10:30):
demographics or whatever. When what seems to be going on is.
You know, a whole bunch of people are going to
vote their party no matter what, regardless of the circumstance.
A whole bunch of people. And then you got enough
people at the top of.
Things are going good. I like the prices and what
I'm making. I'm voting for the same thing we got now.
(10:52):
Things are not going good. I don't like my salary
or what things cost. I'm voting for the other person.
The end. That's what's decided the last several elections. All
the talking pundits, us included, around various demographic shifts and
woke is over or people like family values or whatever
the hell it is. I think the chunk of people
that vote on things are too expensive or not are
(11:14):
deciding the elections.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
As I like to say, if inflation is high, nothing
else matters.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
True that. There's a hell of a lot of truth
to that.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Agreed. Now, Trump and Cump at the conventionette are going
to be trying to really drive home the message that
the Democrats are socialist lunatics and will make the problems
much worse. I believe they are correct. Although I also
believe the Republicans and Trump could be doing a better job.
But that's going to be one of the main messages.
And they're also going to be pitching hard the positive
(11:43):
things that have happened policy-wise. And there are some really
good things that have happened that tend to get lost
in the media landscape. So whether any of this lands
or not, who knows?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, he said specifically the other night, he said, this
election is about me. We need to make this election
about me. He wants him to be on the ticket.
And it's an interesting angle to go with when your
approval rating is as low as it is.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
That works on the base and only the base. If
it was a primary, that might be a decent way
to go.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Or if there were no swing states in play.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Or if there were no weak-ass candidates like old Ken
Paxton in Texas.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Weak-ass. Oh, God.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Hey, I'll tell you what, the one thing that I
can't wait to move on from is the person who
most effectively licks Trump's boots gets his endorsement no matter
how terrible a candidate they are.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
We need to move on from that, but quick. What
is emerging as the biggest story of the day, because
I just was looking up at the TV and both
ABC and CBS National News were covering it, is this
guy who's worked for OpenAI and Anthropic saying AI is
going to kill us all. That is really emerging as
(12:55):
the news of the day, and I've got more on
his takes coming up a little bit later this hour.
What an interesting story. Kind of puts the rest of
this stuff in perspective. The NFL, should they have teams
in Australia? We'll all be dead in a few years,
so I don't know. Go ahead. Anyway, lots of stuff
on the way. Stay here.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Taliban fighters still patrol in American armored vehicles, wear American
tactical gear, and carry American weapons.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Even this Humvee still bears a Green Bay Packers sticker.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
President Trump has bitterly criticized the Biden administration for what
he says is abandoning billions of dollars of military hardware
and is demanding that the Taliban hand it back.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
This comes on the heels, obviously, of the anniversary of
Abbey Gate and the pullout of Afghanistan that we talked
a lot about a week or so ago in that
great Wall Street Journal documentary that we touted about how
awful that all was. How about that report? Taliban fighters
are patrolling the streets, making sure women don't learn to
(14:05):
read or show their necks or any other part of
their body or anything like that. raping people, beating people
in the streets, in American vehicles paid for by American
taxpayers holding American weapons. How do you like that? Lovely.
That is a disturbing story. It is. A different part
of the world and a different disturbing story from Richard
(14:27):
Engel on NBC News.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
It's the terrifying sound of a new weapon which Russia
unleashed across Ukraine's capital. A television studio with journalists inside
was directly targeted. Experts say Ukraine can't stop the new
jet drones. They fly too high and too fast. The
TV studio was reduced to ruins. The deadly new attacks
(14:52):
come after a 72-hour pause by Russia while President Trump's
envoys visited Moscow and Kyiv in a bid to relaunch
peace negotiations.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Oh, my God. And Trump actually said out loud yesterday
because he was on the phone with Putin for a while.
Putin assured me that he wants peace and has no
interest in expanding the war. Then he bombs the bejesus
out of Kiev, killing a whole bunch of targeting civilians
on purpose and killing people. I don't know how Trump
gets those words to come out of his mouth and
(15:23):
not feel embarrassed. And I don't even I I've even
got a guess at this point as to what's going
on with that. But that whole thing that Russia is
now using weapons that Ukraine says it can't stop, fitting
in with this that I woke up to from the
Financial Times, global shipping rules are collapsing, say maritime nations.
(15:45):
Wars and the growth of shadow fleets around the world
are causing a structural shift in global trade, according to
18 maritime authorities. There are so many of these shadow fleets.
That's what we've been bombing lately in Iran, those shadow
fleet ships. oil tankers that are trying to get around
the sanctions and the blockade and everything like that.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
They're smugglers, essentially. It's large-scale industrial smuggling.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
There's so much smuggling going on that you can't even
say that the old rules are in place anymore of,
you know, officially flagged vessels that you know who they
belong to and where they're going and where they come
from and all that.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Oh, boy. Well, the world is unsettled. That much is clear.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Golly.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
All interesting stories. I would say, yes. Do we have
anything that's not mortifying? I have this personal story. So,
what are the laws around people like you and I
making a negative comment about a product and it damaging them?
(16:54):
At what point am I trying to damage a company
and I'm running afoul of a law versus I'm a
reviewer critiquing a product?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, as long as you stick to the truth and
don't have a demonstrable reason to want to damage them,
then like you're selling the stock short or something like that.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
So if it's honest, you're good. I just thought I'd
throw it in here because I talk up my Tesla
vehicles so much. The Plaid that I loved so much,
world's fastest car. And then my Cybertruck that drives me
back and forth to work all the time. Absolutely love.
The tech is the only reason I drive those vehicles.
If it weren't for the tech, there's no freaking way
(17:37):
I would drive a Tesla. The customer service is the worst.
Just the worst of any car of any kind I've
ever dealt with. It is so horrible. And I told
the guy yesterday in those very tones, I said, not
your fault. This is Elon's idea to do everything through
an app and no human beings. It doesn't work. Not
(17:57):
your fault. I said over and over again. I just
I've been dealing with this for years. Next meeting you have,
maybe tell the managers you got people out there who
are unhappy with the whole. We'll do everything on an app.
It doesn't freaking work, sir. We're a robot company. That's
the way he looked at me. He did look at
me like, yeah, whatever. But anyway, thought I would throw
out the yin and the yang of Onan and Tesla. Yeah,
(18:19):
we got more on the way of other stuff.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
In his sudden resignation, former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon claimed
on X, neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is acting responsibly. They
are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.
He added the people building AI earnestly believe that it
could kill us all by the end of the decade,
(18:43):
saying no other human activity poses this level of danger.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Coxon, who says he spent the last.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
Three years doing pre-training research at both AI giants, posted
that he believes AI will soon be superhuman systems that
can hack anything.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Ah, you're nitpicking. So, this is a growing story today,
and he's been on a bit of a roll on
Twitter for the last 18 hours, this Jacob Coxon, who
worked for OpenAI.com. Chat GPT, that was the first earthquake
in AI a couple of years ago. And then he
(19:19):
went to Anthropic because he thought Sam Altman wasn't responsible enough.
He went to Anthropic, which is considered the most responsible
of the AI companies. He's been there for a couple
of years and now says it's all getting completely out
of hand. And we'll get to things that he hears
in the hallways here in just a little bit. But
(19:39):
one thing I did is I and I'll read more
of this later because it's super interesting to me. I
went to both Claude and grock and i'll probably do
it with the other ais too i put uh i
put in there jacob coxson is getting a lot of
attention for his doomerism about ai today make the argument
that he's correct make the argument that he's not correct
and uh at least and it just replied sleep with
(20:02):
one eye open.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Uh-oh.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
If you're flexible enough, put your feet far enough apart
that you can stick your head down between your legs
and kiss your ass goodbye was the response.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Oh, boy. Then included some helpful fitness links so you
can become more flexible.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Um but i read through like the entire grok response
which is uh elon's and uh i gotta tell you
now maybe it's just because i'm a doomer on this
so i'm more susceptible to that argument the argument that
he's correct seems way more persuasive to me than the
argument that he's not i mean like the argument that
he's not like to boil it down um uh Well,
(20:49):
we're kind of burying the lead here. He says that
people are discussing the fact that all of humanity could
be wiped out within 10 years. And they're actually discussing it.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And one of the pushbacks from Grok, the argument that
he's not correct, was it's unlikely that all of humanity
is wiped out within 10 years. Many researchers put the
chance of it much lower than 10%. I thought, what?
The fact that there's any chance all of humanity is
wiped out, the fact that that's even true is hilarious.
It's much more likely to have massive disruptions in employment or...
(21:26):
Hacking into corporations. Okay, so that's the upside? We won't
be dead. We'll just live in a completely different world.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Well, and if I might paraphrase the first sentence you read,
the chance of the entirety of humanity being wiped out
is less than 10%. Now, 40% of humanity being wiped out,
that's a coin flip.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
A quarter? Oh, that'll happen. I mean, come on. That's
a low bar, man. I know. I know. So it's
a pretty good summary here from Grok. Jacob Coxon is
a 27-year-old pre-training researcher who worked on GPT 4.0, 4-0
at OpenAI, which is a big deal, and then Anthropic. Yesterday,
he resigned and left the industry, arguing that both labs
(22:07):
are racing towards self-improving superintelligence that they do not know
how to control, that insiders privately treat extinction as a
live possibility by the end of the decade, and that
a private company Slack channel is the wrong place to
launch that endgame conversation. I think you're right. Anthropic Alignment
(22:28):
lead Evan.
Publicly agreed that researchers there really, this is since Jacob
Coxon has made his statement, another guy who works at
Anthropic on the alignment problem. The alignment problem is you
give it rules and try to make it follow the rules,
which nobody has been able to do yet.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Will it align with not destroying humanity? Or human morals
or laws or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This guy who works on the alignment problem at Anthropic
publicly agreed that researchers there, quote, really do earnestly believe
AI could kill all humans and put his own odds
above 10% within 10 years.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I know.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
I know.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You've got a guy that works at the most important
AI company in the world. And Dario Modi is hiring
the best people out there. We've heard the stories of their...
They're spending... Baseball player money. Shoei Otani money to buy
the best people to work at these companies. And this
guy who works on the alignment problem, which is the
key to being the number one AI. So you got
(23:37):
to assume he's a pretty big deal. Says, yeah, people
are regularly discussing this as it could kill all humans. What?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Well, to the extent that they're focused on it, they're
trying not to have that happen, which I appreciate, and
I thank them for their attention to this matter, to
paraphrase the president. But shouldn't we be having, like, not
a grandstanding stupid people hearing in front of the Senate, but, like,
smart people being honest-type hearings? Do we have that capacity
(24:09):
anymore as a government?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
This is so much like the movie Don't Look Up.
When Leonardo DiCaprio and the hottie chick, what's her name?
Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer Lawrence.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
They're the researchers. She's a gifted actor, by the way. Misogyny.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
It's ugly. They realize an asteroid is coming to the
Earth that will kill us all. And they can't get
anybody to give a crap. They're sitting in the Oval
Office with the president, Meryl Streep, and she's laughing and
joking and talking about the midterms and polling on this
and that and everything like that. And they just won't
take it seriously. And Leonardo DiCaprio, the scientist, is like...
(24:52):
I don't even know what to say. How do you not?
Why is nobody taking this? They go on morning TV
shows where they talk about celebrity breakups, but can't get
anybody to talk about this. This is exactly what's happening here.
It's not an asteroid.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
It's AI.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
We're talking about the reflecting pool. Did somebody actually damage it?
Or was it the paint? Or whatever stupid conversation we're
having on any given day. And not talking about that
the biggest AI company in the world, in the hallways,
is discussing. Boy, I wonder if this is going to
kill everybody within 10 years. Oh, I think it'll be 15. Really?
I think it'll be 5.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
What the f * * * type of AI s * * *
is this?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
As always, we come back to that young sage.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
So I find myself, uh, I'm not a tech guy. I'm, uh, I'm,
I'm looking at this from the outside. Maybe that's the
sort of influence they need. Are we going to have
to develop something? And, and tech guys, please react to
this without calling me an idiot. Uh, if you can
restrain yourselves, might we have a completely different relationship with
the internet soon? where it's almost like your bank isn't
(25:57):
always online with antivirus stuff and tech guys monitoring to
make sure we're not being attacked or whatever. It's going
to be more like leaving a spaceship, right? You take
step one to get on the Internet. You check that
the pressures are right. Then you close the hatch, and
then you open the outer hatch, and then you appraise
(26:18):
whether the environment's safe, and then you quickly get on
the Internet.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Zap zeros and ones around, and then turn it off again.
Might that be the future? I don't know. So in
the argument for why this is a big problem on Anthropic,
which is the very corporation we're talking about, Claude, it
was making the argument that one of the problems we've
got going on right now is each company believes if
(26:43):
they get more careful, the other company will get ahead
of them. That's just within our own little world in
America with Anthropic and OpenAI and Grok and Gemini. I
don't know if it's considered to that level of player
or not. We don't even know what China's doing right there,
but they're all worried that the, you know, anthropics worried
(27:04):
that chat GPT will leap ahead if they if they
slow down at all. Here's a little more from Jacob Coxon,
who resigned from AI from from. Well, I'll just read
what he wrote yesterday, last night. I resigned from Anthropic today.
I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at
both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They're
(27:25):
racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.
More thoughts below. And then he goes through a long thread.
I won't read them all, but just a little bit
of this. The people building AI earnestly believe that it
could kill us all by the end of the decade.
Haven't nailed down your question. You mean this decade or
next decade? But they're both troubling. But one is more
troubling than the other. Well, again, the end of the 2020s?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
This decade? Or, like, starting now a decade? Can we
clarify that, please? Well, three and a half years or
13 and a half years.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Exactly. Because I'm not paying off my car if we're
all going to be dead by the end of this decade. Well, again,
what do they mean by this decade? Somebody's got to
narrow that down. I'm like booking vacations in advance, and
I'd like to know whether I'll be obliterated before I
can say, go on that. I'm diabetic. I'm going to
(28:16):
start eating sweets.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
It doesn't matter whether I die with 10 toes or
8 toes.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
You're right.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
And told yourself, Michael. You're absolutely right. The people building
AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by
the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.
If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their
phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear
the same people express fear privately. No other human activity
poses this level of danger. A common response is, if
(28:44):
they truly believe this, why are they still building it?
At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes.
At Anthropic, the stakes are well understood, but they are
locked in a race to get there first. They believe
no one else will act responsibly, so they must do
it themselves despite the risk. Which sounds about right. Sam
Altman strikes me as, and this is what Elon was
(29:04):
saying about him, he's just, I mean, he's very focused
on one thing and is not super worried about the
morality of all this. No, he's slick and insincere. So
he's just going full speed ahead to try to become
the richest, most powerful guy. Anthropic. So he doesn't care.
Anthropic thinks we've got to go without any guardrails to
(29:26):
make sure we're first because we do care. So you
got the guy that doesn't care, obviously screaming full speed ahead.
And the guy that does care full speed ahead because
he thinks he's doing the moral thing. But this guy's saying,
either way, we're going to end up with super intelligent,
and nobody will be able to control it. So they're
the least worst option. Great. And what about China, as always?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
This is so interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
And, again, it's so interesting that this conversation is not
being had by more people. I mean, there's a certain
amount of, well, what are you going to do? We're
all in the same boat.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
When are we going to get to whether the NFL
should be holding games in Australia or not?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
The important.
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yes, it is. I have.
He goes on to say here, and I'll end with
a positive note here. He goes on to say here
in one of his many tweets today, and I have
a feeling there's going to be a lot of pushback today.
I would imagine Dario Modi is going to make some statements.
Sam Altman is going to make some statements. Probably Elon
will react to this. And we'll see, you know, they're
(30:34):
going to try to calm things down. Of course, they
have a tremendous profit motive with all the most valuable
companies in the world not wanting to be damaged by
people freaking out. Well, I hate you, the optimist. Do
we have an ad to do? At the end of
the segment.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
End of the segment. Okay. He says, I'm optimistic, Jacob Coxon,
the guy that resigned. I'm optimistic about the potential for coordination.
Warning shots like the hugging face attack have made pacing
agreements between U.S. labs more viable. I don't feel like
we're on track to prevent a global race, which may
require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving
(31:15):
model capabilities. I don't feel like we're on track to
prevent a global race. Well, then our domestic agreement means nothing.
It's utterly insignificant, Jacob.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Hey, caramba.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I'm just going to look at it like mortality. Nothing
I can do about it. I'm going to try to
enjoy my day. And I'm going to try to plan
for the uncertain future.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Before you jump into the end. Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
He's got more folks. But we talk about the mortality
stuff a lot.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
All of us do. And especially as you get older,
you talk about heart disease and diet and exercise and
stay away from this or whatever all the time. Mm-hmm.
And it's not going to kill everybody on Earth. It's
only going to kill you. Well, there's a return on
investment there.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I'm not sure there is on worrying about AI, as
it is 100% outside my control. I mean, eventual mortality
is outside my control. When it happens, I have at
least a vote. So that's where it's different. Yeah. Golly gee, well,
that was great.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
So interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
So in case we're not all wiped out, we need
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Paid endorsement.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
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for promoting talent, creating a conflict of interest. Investment advisory
services offered through Talent LLC and SEC registered investment advisor.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
For more additional disclosures, visit bluecollar.com, paid for by Epic Financial.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
President Trump is considering renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself.
And word is, he's also.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
Renaming the Indian Ocean the Bay of Tech Support.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
What an odd target for your humor. Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
You know, if I was Greg Gutfeld, I would label
this following segment, People Who Ought to Shut the Hell Up.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Boom.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
And there'd be some graphic. Here's somebody you should shut
the hell up. One more AI note. Advancements in AI
may soon allow humans to talk with animals, but some
groups claim the research could be violating the animal's right
to privacy.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
What? Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
I know.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
How great is that? So I'm trying to wrap my
head around this. I don't believe there's any chance we're
ever going to be able to talk with animals and
them with us. Oh, you're a fool. My dog and
I talk about you all the time. All right, here's
the story. Here's the story. So we can listen to
them talk to each other? Would that be violating their privacy?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Well, machine learning models are paving the way to catalog
and even mimic the sounds animals make to communicate with
each other, with researchers touting the technology as a way
to better understand the world of animals.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I love this.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
This is an article in Springer Nature, whatever the hell
that is. Quote, but one risk that is currently not
taken into account in research ethics is the concern that
we might be violating the privacy of animals by collecting
data on their vocalizations and movements.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I want to meet this person who wrote that. Good Lord. Wow,
you're a nut.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
An interest in privacy is an interest in controlling how
you appear to others. And the complex social lives of
many non-human animals offer strong support for thinking animals have
this interest. So you got to get a warrant to
wiretap an ape.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Come on.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Is this a one-party dog state or a two-party state?
Good Lord.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So if you eavesdrop on a couple of cats meowing
at each other, you've violated their privacy. Yeah, exactly. I'd
like a saucer of milk. I'm tired of coughing up hairballs.
I gotta poop again. Where's that weird box? Let's see.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Now, one thing that they're describing is actually ethically a
little bit interesting. That is when we can perfectly mimic
the calls of animals. What are the ethics with doing
that in the wild? Because you've got a sophisticated animal
like crows. They have an unbelievably sophisticated net of communication
that they do.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Fascinating beast, the crow.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Anyway, what are the ethics of broadcasting a cry that
they've identified that's essentially, hey, come help, come help, as
all the crows would use it to summon others to
help defend the nest?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Can we do that? Is that ethical? Basically what deer
whistles have been? Yeah. And then we shoot them dead.
That's right. That's a duck call, right? Isn't that just
what a duck call is? Essentially, yeah. Yeah, that's a
good point.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
All right. I will never spend another second worrying about that.
Here's some surprising news. The major Bigfoot sighting in Maine
has been declared a guy in a convincing costume. Apparently,
Maine has been all the Twitter lately that some guy
was ooching about.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Bigfoot lives on the West Coast. There were an unusually
high number of calls. Well, he travels. You know, the
guy walking like this, the woods.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Bigfoot's a millennial. He doesn't want stuff. He wants experiences.
So he's traveled to Maine. The police department noted an
unusually high number of calls, but they've launched an investigation
to determine that Bigfoot is not real. It is a
man in a, quote, very convincing costume.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I haven't seen that. He has beautiful hair. Have you
seen the video or picture of this guy? They've got
a bunch of pictures in this article. Does it look
like a Bigfoot or does it look like a guy
in a costume?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
It's fuzzy, so intentionally, so you can't tell.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
In the modern world, there's no excuse for a fuzzy picture. No, indeed.
If you miss a segment, get the podcast. Armstrong and
Getty On Demand.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Armstrong and Getty.
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the
George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Armstrong and Getty. And now, here's Armstrong and Getty. The
RNC is in full force in downtown Dallas.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
If you go downtown right now to the American Airlines Center,
which is where this is being held, it's a 20,000-seat
arena where the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars play.
And there is security fencing all around the arena. Streets
are shut down. Secret Service has set up security checkpoints. And,
you know, it feels like a full fledged presidential convention.
There's no official party business and there's no president or
(00:48):
vice president being nominated. What that means is that this
is really more of a pep rally.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So are the actual conventions ever since like 1972. So
I don't understand the knock on this midterm convention as
being just like a TV show pep race. Have you
have you been following conventions in the modern era? Who
was that halfwit? The decision's already made. The platform is meaningless.
(01:14):
It's just a bunch of speeches in a TV show
to try to get people all excited, which is fine.
You get to do that. And you either watch it
or not. I probably won't watch a second of this thing.
But I think it's a pretty decent idea. Why not?
Would it be a good response? Why not? And for
all the mockery on CNN and MSNBC where they're mocking it.
(01:35):
By the way, midterm conventions aren't a thing. I've heard
multiple times. I bet money the Democrats have one in
four years.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Having decided, wow, that got a lot of attention. was
on cable news every single night, well, every two nights,
and brought in a bunch of donor money. So they'll
have one in four years.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I would literally fight with my life to guard the
First Amendment, but I want it taken away from that gentleman,
Joe Lovinger of Bloomberg, for his idiotic insights, his non-insights.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So all of this is taking place with Americans rather
unhappy with the economy.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh, yeah, I was going to throw that into the
What I was saying, yeah. Trump's trying to change people's mood. Right.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Although he's perhaps not the perfect messenger because a lot
of people blame Trump. His numbers are upside down on
practically every topic, including the economy. Now, a big share
of that is Democrats. And as they say, Trump could
cure cancer and they'd still aid him for it. He's
putting doctors out of work. So fair criticism. But Americans
(02:43):
are glum-ish. And as usual in the Wall Street Journal,
They throw out various statistics, like last month the country
added an impressive 162,000 jobs. Allegedly, those numbers are always revised.
The unemployment rate is low, correct? The stock market and
AI are making many people rich and boosting retirement savings,
yet surveys tell us Americans are still in a funk.
(03:05):
Their sour mood doesn't match up with what major indicators
say about how the U.S. economy is performing.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Because that's the way people make their decisions. Talking about
your average person. They make their decisions based on the
major indicators. You're sitting there, you're filling up your car
with gas. It's going to be about $ 200, depending on
where you live. And you just went through the grocery
store and it costs $ 150 for a tiny amount of
groceries and your car insurance and blah, blah, blah, all
the other things. But you're sitting there thinking about the...
(03:32):
unemployment rate is headed in the right direction, or the
S & P said 2%, blah, blah, blah. Fuck up, children.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Real factory investment is up 0.2%.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So it doesn't mean people are lying to themselves about
the experience of the economy, because the broad measures, they
point out, are missing how much Americans' costs have risen
since the pandemic, and many of them haven't kept up.
In fact, virtually nobody has kept up income-wise. And so
the University of Michigan measures consumer sentiment. It continues to
flirt with the lowest levels in its decades-long history. This
(04:09):
is the one we pointed out has gone from the
phone to the Internet. They swear that hasn't affected their results.
They worked very hard to make sure it didn't. I
find it difficult to believe that. They mention partisanship. I mean,
just the most bitter partisanship we've seen in quite a
long time.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I noticed that. Yeah. I saw that in the news somewhere.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Whether the stats are entirely accurate or not is kind
of beside the point. And they mentioned that the economy, again,
doesn't look bad. Gross domestic product grew 2.1% year over year.
Job growth has been decent. Unemployment rate has remained low.
But inflation remains trying. Consumer prices were up 3.4% on
the year in July. But it is much lower than
(04:53):
June 22 when it hit 9.1%. That is the truth
that lies. Inflation compounds. It's up 3.4% of that brand
new number that was 109.1%, and it just keeps going
and going.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
We're having this discussion, my whole family. So for one thing,
I'm there with my mom, dad, both my brothers, my kids,
and we got a couple of times on the question
of affordability. This word nobody had ever heard of until
the Democrats started bringing up affordability. We got on just
how expensive everything is. For my parents who are in
(05:35):
the winter of their lives or my brothers who are
roughly the same age as me or their kids. They're
out in the college world or whatever. Everything's so expensive
and everything like that. It's a topic people are actually
talking about. But clearly, as luckily my brothers do understand this.
Nobody seems to understand inflation, what it is or how
(05:56):
it works. True. How, after all these years of having
the inflation, have people not caught on? The rate of
inflation going down, I'm happy about it, but it doesn't
really help me when I go to the grocery store today.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Do you remember in high school where perhaps they taught
you about compound interest and how powerful that is over time?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Inflation works the same way, but in the other direction.
It compounds.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So here's the only statistic you really need to know.
And they say inflation is usually looked at by looking
at year-over-year changes in prices. But the more salient statistic
for many Americans is that consumer prices are 28% higher
than just before the pandemic. Oh, that reminds me.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Hanson, I asked you for some audio and I've not
seen it on the list. Most things are dang near 30%
more expensive than 2020. That is only six years ago.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
That is unbelievable. That's an unbelievable statistic. It's devastating.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
The audio that I asked for that apparently got lost
in the wash, we'll grab it later, was a number
of figures, including Joe Biden, while selling the Inflation Reduction Act,
saying 14 Nobel laureates say this is actually going.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
To cure inflation and bring it down. And they said
that over and over and over again. It's absolutely obscene. Well,
and then politicians of all stripes, and Trump, I think,
got elected on saying, I'm going to bring prices down.
And people, because they don't understand what inflation is, thinking
it's going to go back to the old prices, which
(07:33):
is just horrific.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
He said, I'm going to bring inflation down. That would
have been good, but incomplete. So in a way, he said, well,
not in a way, he clearly set himself up for.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Failure, rhetorically.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And failing we are in terms of consumer sentiment from
Trump's first term to this one. Republicans have dropped by
about a third their consumer sentiment. Independents by about 40%.
And Democrats similarly about 45% from Trump's first term when
(08:09):
even the Democrat numbers were decent. They were low because
they hated Trump, but they're pretty decent. So Again, the backdrop, oh,
that's right, I meant to say this before we get
to the conclusion. Let's see, according to data from payroll
processor ADP, so the prices have gone up 28% since
(08:31):
just before the pandemic. More than a third of workers'
wages did not keep up with inflation. I'm surprised that.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
It's that low, honestly. I have a new old theory
about elections and why one of the reasons I'm not
paying much attention to the midterm convention that's happening tonight.
But first, we need to tell you about Incogni, which
we have been using. And man, oh, man, oh, man,
(09:04):
just just last week, Incogni got a bunch of stuff
off the Internet that I didn't know was out there
that I'm so glad is no longer floating around out there.
Somewhere right now, a stranger is buying a list right
now of your information. Data brokers sell marketing lists named
suffering seniors or recently widowed or rural and barely making it.
(09:26):
All kinds of different information that floats around, gets sold,
and you don't want your name, phone number, address, age, income,
health problems, everything out there for people to see.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Hear, hear. And maybe they're just looking to scam you
and spam you in the normal way. Maybe they're looking
for your mom. Use Incogni. It automatically sends removal requests
to more than 420 data brokers and people search sites,
then keeps following up so you don't get quietly relisted.
Just go to Incogni.com slash Armstrong for 60% off. Your
private life should never be someone else's prospect list. incogni.com
(10:02):
slash armstrong they can't harm you if they can't find you.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
What i find so annoying about discussions about the midterms
and uh this convention everything like that is is acting
like It indicates something. So far, we haven't had an
election in a long time that indicates much. I think
probably because you need several in a row that indicates
a major shift of something toward a different attitude or
(10:30):
demographics or whatever. When what seems to be going on is.
You know, a whole bunch of people are going to
vote their party no matter what, regardless of the circumstance.
A whole bunch of people. And then you got enough
people at the top of.
Things are going good. I like the prices and what
I'm making. I'm voting for the same thing we got now.
(10:52):
Things are not going good. I don't like my salary
or what things cost. I'm voting for the other person.
The end. That's what's decided the last several elections. All
the talking pundits, us included, around various demographic shifts and
woke is over or people like family values or whatever
the hell it is. I think the chunk of people
that vote on things are too expensive or not are
(11:14):
deciding the elections.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
As I like to say, if inflation is high, nothing
else matters.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
True that. There's a hell of a lot of truth
to that.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Agreed. Now, Trump and Cump at the conventionette are going
to be trying to really drive home the message that
the Democrats are socialist lunatics and will make the problems
much worse. I believe they are correct. Although I also
believe the Republicans and Trump could be doing a better job.
But that's going to be one of the main messages.
And they're also going to be pitching hard the positive
(11:43):
things that have happened policy-wise. And there are some really
good things that have happened that tend to get lost
in the media landscape. So whether any of this lands
or not, who knows?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, he said specifically the other night, he said, this
election is about me. We need to make this election
about me. He wants him to be on the ticket.
And it's an interesting angle to go with when your
approval rating is as low as it is.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
That works on the base and only the base. If
it was a primary, that might be a decent way
to go.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Or if there were no swing states in play.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Or if there were no weak-ass candidates like old Ken
Paxton in Texas.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Weak-ass. Oh, God.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Hey, I'll tell you what, the one thing that I
can't wait to move on from is the person who
most effectively licks Trump's boots gets his endorsement no matter
how terrible a candidate they are.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
We need to move on from that, but quick. What
is emerging as the biggest story of the day, because
I just was looking up at the TV and both
ABC and CBS National News were covering it, is this
guy who's worked for OpenAI and Anthropic saying AI is
going to kill us all. That is really emerging as
(12:55):
the news of the day, and I've got more on
his takes coming up a little bit later this hour.
What an interesting story. Kind of puts the rest of
this stuff in perspective. The NFL, should they have teams
in Australia? We'll all be dead in a few years,
so I don't know. Go ahead. Anyway, lots of stuff
on the way. Stay here.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Taliban fighters still patrol in American armored vehicles, wear American
tactical gear, and carry American weapons.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Even this Humvee still bears a Green Bay Packers sticker.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
President Trump has bitterly criticized the Biden administration for what
he says is abandoning billions of dollars of military hardware
and is demanding that the Taliban hand it back.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
This comes on the heels, obviously, of the anniversary of
Abbey Gate and the pullout of Afghanistan that we talked
a lot about a week or so ago in that
great Wall Street Journal documentary that we touted about how
awful that all was. How about that report? Taliban fighters
are patrolling the streets, making sure women don't learn to
(14:05):
read or show their necks or any other part of
their body or anything like that. raping people, beating people
in the streets, in American vehicles paid for by American
taxpayers holding American weapons. How do you like that? Lovely.
That is a disturbing story. It is. A different part
of the world and a different disturbing story from Richard
(14:27):
Engel on NBC News.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
It's the terrifying sound of a new weapon which Russia
unleashed across Ukraine's capital. A television studio with journalists inside
was directly targeted. Experts say Ukraine can't stop the new
jet drones. They fly too high and too fast. The
TV studio was reduced to ruins. The deadly new attacks
(14:52):
come after a 72-hour pause by Russia while President Trump's
envoys visited Moscow and Kyiv in a bid to relaunch
peace negotiations.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Oh, my God. And Trump actually said out loud yesterday
because he was on the phone with Putin for a while.
Putin assured me that he wants peace and has no
interest in expanding the war. Then he bombs the bejesus
out of Kiev, killing a whole bunch of targeting civilians
on purpose and killing people. I don't know how Trump
gets those words to come out of his mouth and
(15:23):
not feel embarrassed. And I don't even I I've even
got a guess at this point as to what's going
on with that. But that whole thing that Russia is
now using weapons that Ukraine says it can't stop, fitting
in with this that I woke up to from the
Financial Times, global shipping rules are collapsing, say maritime nations.
(15:45):
Wars and the growth of shadow fleets around the world
are causing a structural shift in global trade, according to
18 maritime authorities. There are so many of these shadow fleets.
That's what we've been bombing lately in Iran, those shadow
fleet ships. oil tankers that are trying to get around
the sanctions and the blockade and everything like that.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
They're smugglers, essentially. It's large-scale industrial smuggling.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
There's so much smuggling going on that you can't even
say that the old rules are in place anymore of,
you know, officially flagged vessels that you know who they
belong to and where they're going and where they come
from and all that.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Oh, boy. Well, the world is unsettled. That much is clear.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Golly.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
All interesting stories. I would say, yes. Do we have
anything that's not mortifying? I have this personal story. So,
what are the laws around people like you and I
making a negative comment about a product and it damaging them?
(16:54):
At what point am I trying to damage a company
and I'm running afoul of a law versus I'm a
reviewer critiquing a product?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, as long as you stick to the truth and
don't have a demonstrable reason to want to damage them,
then like you're selling the stock short or something like that.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
So if it's honest, you're good. I just thought I'd
throw it in here because I talk up my Tesla
vehicles so much. The Plaid that I loved so much,
world's fastest car. And then my Cybertruck that drives me
back and forth to work all the time. Absolutely love.
The tech is the only reason I drive those vehicles.
If it weren't for the tech, there's no freaking way
(17:37):
I would drive a Tesla. The customer service is the worst.
Just the worst of any car of any kind I've
ever dealt with. It is so horrible. And I told
the guy yesterday in those very tones, I said, not
your fault. This is Elon's idea to do everything through
an app and no human beings. It doesn't work. Not
(17:57):
your fault. I said over and over again. I just
I've been dealing with this for years. Next meeting you have,
maybe tell the managers you got people out there who
are unhappy with the whole. We'll do everything on an app.
It doesn't freaking work, sir. We're a robot company. That's
the way he looked at me. He did look at
me like, yeah, whatever. But anyway, thought I would throw
out the yin and the yang of Onan and Tesla. Yeah,
(18:19):
we got more on the way of other stuff.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
In his sudden resignation, former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon claimed
on X, neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is acting responsibly. They
are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.
He added the people building AI earnestly believe that it
could kill us all by the end of the decade,
(18:43):
saying no other human activity poses this level of danger.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Coxon, who says he spent the last.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
Three years doing pre-training research at both AI giants, posted
that he believes AI will soon be superhuman systems that
can hack anything.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Ah, you're nitpicking. So, this is a growing story today,
and he's been on a bit of a roll on
Twitter for the last 18 hours, this Jacob Coxon, who
worked for OpenAI.com. Chat GPT, that was the first earthquake
in AI a couple of years ago. And then he
(19:19):
went to Anthropic because he thought Sam Altman wasn't responsible enough.
He went to Anthropic, which is considered the most responsible
of the AI companies. He's been there for a couple
of years and now says it's all getting completely out
of hand. And we'll get to things that he hears
in the hallways here in just a little bit. But
(19:39):
one thing I did is I and I'll read more
of this later because it's super interesting to me. I
went to both Claude and grock and i'll probably do
it with the other ais too i put uh i
put in there jacob coxson is getting a lot of
attention for his doomerism about ai today make the argument
that he's correct make the argument that he's not correct
and uh at least and it just replied sleep with
(20:02):
one eye open.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Uh-oh.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
If you're flexible enough, put your feet far enough apart
that you can stick your head down between your legs
and kiss your ass goodbye was the response.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Oh, boy. Then included some helpful fitness links so you
can become more flexible.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Um but i read through like the entire grok response
which is uh elon's and uh i gotta tell you
now maybe it's just because i'm a doomer on this
so i'm more susceptible to that argument the argument that
he's correct seems way more persuasive to me than the
argument that he's not i mean like the argument that
he's not like to boil it down um uh Well,
(20:49):
we're kind of burying the lead here. He says that
people are discussing the fact that all of humanity could
be wiped out within 10 years. And they're actually discussing it.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And one of the pushbacks from Grok, the argument that
he's not correct, was it's unlikely that all of humanity
is wiped out within 10 years. Many researchers put the
chance of it much lower than 10%. I thought, what?
The fact that there's any chance all of humanity is
wiped out, the fact that that's even true is hilarious.
It's much more likely to have massive disruptions in employment or...
(21:26):
Hacking into corporations. Okay, so that's the upside? We won't
be dead. We'll just live in a completely different world.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Well, and if I might paraphrase the first sentence you read,
the chance of the entirety of humanity being wiped out
is less than 10%. Now, 40% of humanity being wiped out,
that's a coin flip.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
A quarter? Oh, that'll happen. I mean, come on. That's
a low bar, man. I know. I know. So it's
a pretty good summary here from Grok. Jacob Coxon is
a 27-year-old pre-training researcher who worked on GPT 4.0, 4-0
at OpenAI, which is a big deal, and then Anthropic. Yesterday,
he resigned and left the industry, arguing that both labs
(22:07):
are racing towards self-improving superintelligence that they do not know
how to control, that insiders privately treat extinction as a
live possibility by the end of the decade, and that
a private company Slack channel is the wrong place to
launch that endgame conversation. I think you're right. Anthropic Alignment
(22:28):
lead Evan.
Publicly agreed that researchers there really, this is since Jacob
Coxon has made his statement, another guy who works at
Anthropic on the alignment problem. The alignment problem is you
give it rules and try to make it follow the rules,
which nobody has been able to do yet.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Will it align with not destroying humanity? Or human morals
or laws or whatever.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This guy who works on the alignment problem at Anthropic
publicly agreed that researchers there, quote, really do earnestly believe
AI could kill all humans and put his own odds
above 10% within 10 years.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I know.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
I know.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You've got a guy that works at the most important
AI company in the world. And Dario Modi is hiring
the best people out there. We've heard the stories of their...
They're spending... Baseball player money. Shoei Otani money to buy
the best people to work at these companies. And this
guy who works on the alignment problem, which is the
key to being the number one AI. So you got
(23:37):
to assume he's a pretty big deal. Says, yeah, people
are regularly discussing this as it could kill all humans. What?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Well, to the extent that they're focused on it, they're
trying not to have that happen, which I appreciate, and
I thank them for their attention to this matter, to
paraphrase the president. But shouldn't we be having, like, not
a grandstanding stupid people hearing in front of the Senate, but, like,
smart people being honest-type hearings? Do we have that capacity
(24:09):
anymore as a government?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
This is so much like the movie Don't Look Up.
When Leonardo DiCaprio and the hottie chick, what's her name?
Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer Lawrence.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
They're the researchers. She's a gifted actor, by the way. Misogyny.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
It's ugly. They realize an asteroid is coming to the
Earth that will kill us all. And they can't get
anybody to give a crap. They're sitting in the Oval
Office with the president, Meryl Streep, and she's laughing and
joking and talking about the midterms and polling on this
and that and everything like that. And they just won't
take it seriously. And Leonardo DiCaprio, the scientist, is like...
(24:52):
I don't even know what to say. How do you not?
Why is nobody taking this? They go on morning TV
shows where they talk about celebrity breakups, but can't get
anybody to talk about this. This is exactly what's happening here.
It's not an asteroid.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
It's AI.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
We're talking about the reflecting pool. Did somebody actually damage it?
Or was it the paint? Or whatever stupid conversation we're
having on any given day. And not talking about that
the biggest AI company in the world, in the hallways,
is discussing. Boy, I wonder if this is going to
kill everybody within 10 years. Oh, I think it'll be 15. Really?
I think it'll be 5.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
What the f * * * type of AI s * * *
is this?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
As always, we come back to that young sage.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
So I find myself, uh, I'm not a tech guy. I'm, uh, I'm,
I'm looking at this from the outside. Maybe that's the
sort of influence they need. Are we going to have
to develop something? And, and tech guys, please react to
this without calling me an idiot. Uh, if you can
restrain yourselves, might we have a completely different relationship with
the internet soon? where it's almost like your bank isn't
(25:57):
always online with antivirus stuff and tech guys monitoring to
make sure we're not being attacked or whatever. It's going
to be more like leaving a spaceship, right? You take
step one to get on the Internet. You check that
the pressures are right. Then you close the hatch, and
then you open the outer hatch, and then you appraise
(26:18):
whether the environment's safe, and then you quickly get on
the Internet.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Zap zeros and ones around, and then turn it off again.
Might that be the future? I don't know. So in
the argument for why this is a big problem on Anthropic,
which is the very corporation we're talking about, Claude, it
was making the argument that one of the problems we've
got going on right now is each company believes if
(26:43):
they get more careful, the other company will get ahead
of them. That's just within our own little world in
America with Anthropic and OpenAI and Grok and Gemini. I
don't know if it's considered to that level of player
or not. We don't even know what China's doing right there,
but they're all worried that the, you know, anthropics worried
(27:04):
that chat GPT will leap ahead if they if they
slow down at all. Here's a little more from Jacob Coxon,
who resigned from AI from from. Well, I'll just read
what he wrote yesterday, last night. I resigned from Anthropic today.
I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at
both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They're
(27:25):
racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.
More thoughts below. And then he goes through a long thread.
I won't read them all, but just a little bit
of this. The people building AI earnestly believe that it
could kill us all by the end of the decade.
Haven't nailed down your question. You mean this decade or
next decade? But they're both troubling. But one is more
troubling than the other. Well, again, the end of the 2020s?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
This decade? Or, like, starting now a decade? Can we
clarify that, please? Well, three and a half years or
13 and a half years.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Exactly. Because I'm not paying off my car if we're
all going to be dead by the end of this decade. Well, again,
what do they mean by this decade? Somebody's got to
narrow that down. I'm like booking vacations in advance, and
I'd like to know whether I'll be obliterated before I
can say, go on that. I'm diabetic. I'm going to
(28:16):
start eating sweets.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
It doesn't matter whether I die with 10 toes or
8 toes.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
You're right.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
And told yourself, Michael. You're absolutely right. The people building
AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by
the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.
If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their
phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear
the same people express fear privately. No other human activity
poses this level of danger. A common response is, if
(28:44):
they truly believe this, why are they still building it?
At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes.
At Anthropic, the stakes are well understood, but they are
locked in a race to get there first. They believe
no one else will act responsibly, so they must do
it themselves despite the risk. Which sounds about right. Sam
Altman strikes me as, and this is what Elon was
(29:04):
saying about him, he's just, I mean, he's very focused
on one thing and is not super worried about the
morality of all this. No, he's slick and insincere. So
he's just going full speed ahead to try to become
the richest, most powerful guy. Anthropic. So he doesn't care.
Anthropic thinks we've got to go without any guardrails to
(29:26):
make sure we're first because we do care. So you
got the guy that doesn't care, obviously screaming full speed ahead.
And the guy that does care full speed ahead because
he thinks he's doing the moral thing. But this guy's saying,
either way, we're going to end up with super intelligent,
and nobody will be able to control it. So they're
the least worst option. Great. And what about China, as always?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
This is so interesting.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
And, again, it's so interesting that this conversation is not
being had by more people. I mean, there's a certain
amount of, well, what are you going to do? We're
all in the same boat.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
When are we going to get to whether the NFL
should be holding games in Australia or not?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
The important.
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yes, it is. I have.
He goes on to say here, and I'll end with
a positive note here. He goes on to say here
in one of his many tweets today, and I have
a feeling there's going to be a lot of pushback today.
I would imagine Dario Modi is going to make some statements.
Sam Altman is going to make some statements. Probably Elon
will react to this. And we'll see, you know, they're
(30:34):
going to try to calm things down. Of course, they
have a tremendous profit motive with all the most valuable
companies in the world not wanting to be damaged by
people freaking out. Well, I hate you, the optimist. Do
we have an ad to do? At the end of
the segment.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
End of the segment. Okay. He says, I'm optimistic, Jacob Coxon,
the guy that resigned. I'm optimistic about the potential for coordination.
Warning shots like the hugging face attack have made pacing
agreements between U.S. labs more viable. I don't feel like
we're on track to prevent a global race, which may
require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving
(31:15):
model capabilities. I don't feel like we're on track to
prevent a global race. Well, then our domestic agreement means nothing.
It's utterly insignificant, Jacob.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Hey, caramba.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I'm just going to look at it like mortality. Nothing
I can do about it. I'm going to try to
enjoy my day. And I'm going to try to plan
for the uncertain future.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Before you jump into the end. Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
He's got more folks. But we talk about the mortality
stuff a lot.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
All of us do. And especially as you get older,
you talk about heart disease and diet and exercise and
stay away from this or whatever all the time. Mm-hmm.
And it's not going to kill everybody on Earth. It's
only going to kill you. Well, there's a return on
investment there.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I'm not sure there is on worrying about AI, as
it is 100% outside my control. I mean, eventual mortality
is outside my control. When it happens, I have at
least a vote. So that's where it's different. Yeah. Golly gee, well,
that was great.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
So interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
So in case we're not all wiped out, we need
to plan for the future, and that includes you good people.
Blue Collar Dollar wants to talk to the small business owners, farmers,
hardworking folks. who built this country but aren't, you know,
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Paid endorsement.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
Armstrong and Getty are not talent clients and receive compensation
for promoting talent, creating a conflict of interest. Investment advisory
services offered through Talent LLC and SEC registered investment advisor.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
For more additional disclosures, visit bluecollar.com, paid for by Epic Financial.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
President Trump is considering renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself.
And word is, he's also.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
Renaming the Indian Ocean the Bay of Tech Support.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
What an odd target for your humor. Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
You know, if I was Greg Gutfeld, I would label
this following segment, People Who Ought to Shut the Hell Up.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Boom.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
And there'd be some graphic. Here's somebody you should shut
the hell up. One more AI note. Advancements in AI
may soon allow humans to talk with animals, but some
groups claim the research could be violating the animal's right
to privacy.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
What? Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
I know.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
How great is that? So I'm trying to wrap my
head around this. I don't believe there's any chance we're
ever going to be able to talk with animals and
them with us. Oh, you're a fool. My dog and
I talk about you all the time. All right, here's
the story. Here's the story. So we can listen to
them talk to each other? Would that be violating their privacy?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Well, machine learning models are paving the way to catalog
and even mimic the sounds animals make to communicate with
each other, with researchers touting the technology as a way
to better understand the world of animals.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
I love this.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
This is an article in Springer Nature, whatever the hell
that is. Quote, but one risk that is currently not
taken into account in research ethics is the concern that
we might be violating the privacy of animals by collecting
data on their vocalizations and movements.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I want to meet this person who wrote that. Good Lord. Wow,
you're a nut.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
An interest in privacy is an interest in controlling how
you appear to others. And the complex social lives of
many non-human animals offer strong support for thinking animals have
this interest. So you got to get a warrant to
wiretap an ape.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Come on.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Is this a one-party dog state or a two-party state?
Good Lord.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So if you eavesdrop on a couple of cats meowing
at each other, you've violated their privacy. Yeah, exactly. I'd
like a saucer of milk. I'm tired of coughing up hairballs.
I gotta poop again. Where's that weird box? Let's see.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Now, one thing that they're describing is actually ethically a
little bit interesting. That is when we can perfectly mimic
the calls of animals. What are the ethics with doing
that in the wild? Because you've got a sophisticated animal
like crows. They have an unbelievably sophisticated net of communication
that they do.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Fascinating beast, the crow.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Anyway, what are the ethics of broadcasting a cry that
they've identified that's essentially, hey, come help, come help, as
all the crows would use it to summon others to
help defend the nest?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Can we do that? Is that ethical? Basically what deer
whistles have been? Yeah. And then we shoot them dead.
That's right. That's a duck call, right? Isn't that just
what a duck call is? Essentially, yeah. Yeah, that's a
good point.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
All right. I will never spend another second worrying about that.
Here's some surprising news. The major Bigfoot sighting in Maine
has been declared a guy in a convincing costume. Apparently,
Maine has been all the Twitter lately that some guy
was ooching about.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Bigfoot lives on the West Coast. There were an unusually
high number of calls. Well, he travels. You know, the
guy walking like this, the woods.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Bigfoot's a millennial. He doesn't want stuff. He wants experiences.
So he's traveled to Maine. The police department noted an
unusually high number of calls, but they've launched an investigation
to determine that Bigfoot is not real. It is a
man in a, quote, very convincing costume.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I haven't seen that. He has beautiful hair. Have you
seen the video or picture of this guy? They've got
a bunch of pictures in this article. Does it look
like a Bigfoot or does it look like a guy
in a costume?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
It's fuzzy, so intentionally, so you can't tell.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
In the modern world, there's no excuse for a fuzzy picture. No, indeed.
If you miss a segment, get the podcast. Armstrong and
Getty On Demand.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Armstrong and Getty.
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