May 7, 2024 • 24 mins
UCLA is using facial recognition (same technology used to identify those involved in Jan.6) to ID members of the mob that attacked the pro-Palestinian camp. Newsom is staying in the background amid California campus protests. ABC News technology reporter Mike Dobuski joins the show for ‘Tech Tuesday.’ Mike talks about Apple’s first event of the year, big changes to the iPad Pro & iPad Air, & OLED screens.
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(00:00):
You're listening to bill handle on demandfrom KFI A M six forty. You
are listening to the bill handle.Show you this is KFI am A six
forty bill handle. Here it isa taco Tuesday, May seventh. A
(00:24):
couple of things. We're looking atbig, big news over in the Mid
East. Israel, Sorry about that. Israel has taken control of the Palestinian
side of the Rafa crossing, andthat's between Egypt and Gaza, which and
(00:45):
is attacking Rafa. I mean,right there on the verge of this major
attack on Rafa, even as negotiationsare going on and they look like they're
closer and then they fell apart again. A lot going on over there,
and we'll cert we talk about thatlater on. Now let's go back to
the protests. And this is thepolice side of the protests. And I'm
(01:07):
going to put together January sixth RonaldReagan protests about the war in Vietnam and
what's going on now, and I'lltry to wrap this up into one sort
of coherent thought, which is noteasy for me to do under any circumstances.
Okay, the problem they're having now, the police is trying to identify
(01:30):
the dozens of people who attack thepro Palestinian camp at UCLA. I mean
this went beyond merely protesting. Youhad the counter protesters attacking the protest.
Now you have to argue that theprotesters themselves it is not particularly violent.
I mean there's a little bit forthe most part peaceful. I mean taking
(01:51):
over buildings, yes, getting inthe way of confirmation, getting in the
way of graduating absolutely, not allowingpeople to go into classes, yes,
trespassing yes, but not utter outrightviolence. Well, the violence actually did
happen with the counter protesters at UCLA, and that's that's crime. Now We're
(02:13):
not talking about trespassing anymore. We'retalking big time crime. So they wore
masks. How do you how doyou get their identity? Can't see him?
Well, here is where technology comesin and AI is quickly quickly coming
(02:35):
to the forefront on this. UCLAdetectives are scanning hundreds of images and if
they don't, if they have facialrecognition, then that's fairly easy. Then
they just compare it to what's goingon in the world of identity theft,
identity recognition. Everybody seems to havean Instagram page on Facebook, so you
(02:58):
can put all that together. That'sfairly easy if even if you don't know
who they are. Beyond that,though, let's say you're trying to grab
someone who was there and really gotinvolved in illegal activities in a big,
big way as in super violence,like those counter protesters. Okay, you
can't see them with a mask.How about the clothes they wear? Well,
(03:20):
how do you know that? Well, let's look at identity software that
puts together Okay, they were there'sa guy there who wore clothes who put
who looks like someone very similar tohave, who's been on an Instagram image
that puts you in the same placeright the same same place, same time.
And didn't they park near the campusand there's all kinds of video there
(03:44):
and then walk to the protest siteand look at the clothes they were wearing,
look at the people they were around. Just you can go on and
on and on and put it together. And that's what they're doing. So
protesters wearing masks, I mean,it is harder. There's no question if
they grab a facial recognition, ifthey get a snapshot of your face,
they're gonna know who you are.You know, there are these protesters that
(04:08):
refuse to give they're being arrested andthey refuse to give their names. Give
me a break. You know,they're gonna find out who those folks are
in about two seconds with information that'sout there on the internet. But there
is a much much harder job whenthey're wearing masks and everybody is wearing the
caffiat the Palestinian. First of all, they are cover themselves in the Palestinian
(04:30):
flag. A lot of people dothat, and wearing that head garb the
Palestinian. Hey job, those scarves, those caffiats. You know, they
look like they all come from anItalian restaurant. They took the tablecloths off
Italian restaurant. Now they're wearing themaround their head. You've got a lot
of that in terms of covering upwho you are. None of that is
(04:51):
going to work. The technology isso far advanced. And you know when
we found out about this, howthirteen hundre January sixth protesters right as they
would describe themselves insurrectionists who took overthe capital. Very very different animal there
(05:12):
there. They were trying to takeover the government of the United States and
undo an election. Very different,but they use this technology people that wore
masks. Again, what were theylooking, what would they look like,
what did they drive? Where werethey Let's check out the clothing and then
what we had January sixth was verydifferent because anything that was put up instantly,
(05:35):
the tips came in, coworkers,family members, because these people were
trying to take over the capital.Here are the protesters is going to be
very different. Oh, by theway, you know it's against this,
the ACLU because it's all invasion ofprivacy. Invasion of privacy to the ACLU
is if you get your picture taken, for example, they want driver's license
(05:56):
with just a stick figure face foreverybody. The government doesn't have any right
to know what you look like,where you live, how you live.
So of course anything dealing with facerecognition and AI trying to figure out who
you are, even for criminal prosecution. And I'm glad the ACLU is the
ACLU is there to at least modify, at least keep the government from going
(06:16):
completely out of control. But that'sthe fight that's going to go on right
now. AI, face voice recognition. They're even going to be and they
have been able to is figure outwho people are by their gate literally how
they walk and mannerisms, and howthey point, and how they gesticulate,
(06:43):
and how they look. For example, we hear on the show. I
mean it's not video, but certainlythe timber of our voice. So I
got a great one coming up lateron about that. And that's at eight
thirty. And there's a connection therethat I'll share with you. In any
case, try to figure out whoeverybody is. Also, these gutless wonders
that are protesting the difference between whathappened in the war and Vietnam protesters and
(07:09):
this time around. Look at photosof Vietnam protesters of fifty years ago.
Nobody wore a mask. They hadno trouble telling people, showing people who
they were. Hey, we're herefor a cause. Well, these gutless
wonders don't want anybody to know whoknow who they are because they are afraid
of getting nailed. Okay, somuch for that. Coming up, I'm
(07:33):
going to compare Gavin Newsom and aguy by the name of Ronald Reagan,
both dealing with protests on campus.You've heard that phrase, different time,
different place, Oh yeah, bigtime. I want to take a different
spin here. What's going on inthe land of student protesters at various colleges
(07:57):
around the country, particularly EUCLA isreally become a poster child and a sort
of I guess the one campus thata lot of news outlets, all of
them are really paying attention to forobvious reasons. All right, so let
me go back to May of nineteensixty nine. Okay, protests, the
Vietnam War protests were really starting toramp up, and you'll see video.
(08:22):
You go to YouTube, and you'llsee a National Guard helicopter over the campus
UC Berkeley spring tear gas on thecrowd. Imagine that today it was the
sixth consecutive day of demonstrations, andcampus or were plans to develop what they
said was the People's Park, illegalassembly, you know, camping in a
(08:43):
place where they shouldn't camp. Andso there you had the governor, a
guy who named Ronald Reagan at thetime, called in twenty three hundred National
Guard troops, hundreds of highway patrolmen. They brought shotguns, rifles, bayonets,
and Governor Ronald Reagan said it allstarted because universities quote, let young
(09:05):
people think they had the right tochoose the laws that they would obey as
long as they were doing it inthe name of social protests, and he
called the student protests orgies of destruction. All right, So here we are
fifty five years later, and campusis all around California again overwhelmed by student
(09:31):
protesters, including that one violent clashat UCLA, probably the worst clash that
existed with counter protesters, they saypro Israelis. I don't know if they
were particularly pro Israelis. I knewthey were anti Palestinian, pro Palestinians.
I think they were just a bunchof thugs that came in and started beating
(09:52):
people up and took advantage of themelee that occurred. And so that's why
UCLA is at the forefront of allthis. And so how is Governor Newsom
responding? Very differently? He isno Ronald Reagan. Now he's met with
law enforcement officials and U university leadersprivately, we have him, haven't heard
(10:13):
him speak to the news media.He has directed the Office of Emergency Services
to support police response when requested bylocal agencies. Didn't activate the National Guard.
I don't know if it was necessaryor not. And he went on
social media last week condemning the violenceat UCLA and saying the right to free
(10:37):
speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus.
That's the usual trope that you're hearing. Okay, thank you. Everybody has
a right to protest, but youcan't deal with it with violence or vandalism.
Come on, guys, So whatare we gonna do? And we've
talked about this before. So Thursday, literally hours after the rest of UCLA,
(11:03):
Newsom did post a video promoting expandednational monuments showed him at a creek
beneath trees. Look at this,people think that's a little tone deaf,
don't you think? I mean?He has been low key. Reagan promised
(11:24):
to clean up the mess at Berkeleywhen he ran. Newsome is working on
homelessness and working, of course onlegalization of marijuana, which he ran on.
Dealing with the tough crime policies nowas a governor should, and the
issues are very different back then.But dealing with protests, that's a now.
(11:48):
Ronald Reagan took it as a nowand dealt with it, and a
lot of people are not happy withthe way he dealt with it, pretty
heavy handed. The Vietnam War,though, was real easy. You either
were or were against. It wasRepublicans were in favor of the war,
Democrats started moving against the war.It was pretty clear cut. This one
not so clear cut, particularly politically. Republicans are all in favor of Israel.
(12:13):
That's an easy one. Democrats aresplit on this because you've got Democrats,
even Jewish Democrats, which is amost Jews belong to the Democratic Party.
They're split on this. You know, there are Jewish protesters pro Palestinian
protesters, and where do you gowith this is there are allegations of anti
(12:35):
Semitism. I don't see much ofthat, certainly not in the world of
protests. I mean it's pure antiIsrael, pure anti Zionism. If I'm
a Jew protesting what's happening in Palestine, which I could easily say I was,
I mean, I can see theirposition. If I wasn't so biased,
i'd probably be father. Now,not that I do protest, but
(12:58):
if I were a student, andI believe this strongly, I'd go out
there and protests, and if aguy next to me has a sign that
talks about Judaism and how Jews aredoing this, I beat the guy to
a pope with a minora. You'renot seeing this going on very much,
and politically it's screwing the Democratic Party. Which side do you go on?
(13:22):
Didn't happen that way in Vietnam.Parties were not screwed up because of that.
So there are so many ramfications what'sgoing on. The big takeaway here
is let's look at what happened insixty eight, sixty nine, seventy seventy
one, look, so that we'lllook what's happening now, and we also
(13:46):
have to compare it to what's happeningin January sixth and how we dealt with
quote those protests. All right,it's time for MIKEH. Dubuski Tech Tuesday,
ABC News Technology reporter out of NewYork. Mike, as always,
thanks for joining us, of course, happy to be here. The first
event of the year that Apple isholding happens today. Let's talk about what
(14:07):
is expected, because I know youdon't get much information up front, there
is not a lot of intelligence.What is expected? Well, interestingly enough,
the event itself is actually wrapping upnow. It started ten Eastern Here
is a very early West Coast eventfor Apple unveiling new iPads. So we
actually they're just wrapping up now.I'm watching Tim Cook kind of give his
(14:31):
closing remarks on this event, relativelyshort event because it is a sort of
not a headliner event for Apple.This is the update to the iPad Pro
and the iPad Air. What welearned is the big news is really a
big screen update for the pro models. These are the sort of top end
Apple iPad devices. They now haveOLED screens for the first time. This
(14:52):
is technology that we see at playon the iPhone, also on some pretty
high end TVs. Richer colors,deeper blacks, higher contrasts, that type
of thing. So this is reallyseemingly aimed at what people seem to use
the iPad for a lot, whichis watching TV. Many people have rightly
or wrongly criticized the Apple iPad forbeing just a Netflix machine, and this
(15:13):
seems to go some way to addressingthat. Yeah, I mean, how
big a deal is it when you'retalking about high end computer stuff, I
mean high end computers laptops, becauseI know, and I was stunned when
I found out you could pay sixseven thousand dollars for one of the Apple
high end laptops. Even more insome cases the Mac pro will run you
(15:37):
you know, in the tens ofthousands of dollars. But the idea here
is that this is mainly for peoplewho either run businesses or do sort of
high intensity computing run like tech companiesand that sort of thing, So you
know that that's really where a lotof that cost comes from. And Apple
doesn't sell a ton of those typesof computers. They mainly focus in terms
(15:58):
of numbers on devices like this,like the iPad Pro, which you know
is not cheap. It now startsat one thousand dollars, which is a
little bit more expensive than where itwas previously, but even still, this
is kind of a relatively large moneymaker for them, and the updates to
the iPad are now coming at apretty crucial moment because we've seen sales of
(16:18):
this device slide recently. According toApple's Q two earnings, iPad sales were
down more than sixteen percent year overyear, probably do in no small part
to the fact that they had kindof left the old one out on the
vine for a long time. Thisis the first Apple iPad event that we've
seen in more than a year,so you know, they kind of left
this device off to the wayside withsome pretty big improvements today, they seem
(16:42):
to be sending the message that hey, we haven't forgot about this thing.
If you like an iPad, now'sthe time to upgrade. You know.
I've been looking at obviously being partand parcel of the news cycle and talking
about what's going on, particularly withexperts like you, But I have noticed
that there aren't any major major breakthroughsin the last few years. I mean,
(17:04):
this all seems very incremental, yes, and perhaps no accident on Apple's
part there. I mean, theyare a multi trillion dollar company. They've
clearly figured out something that works.And with regard to the iPad in particular,
this device is in a weird middleground. Right. When it first
debuted, people kind of called ita big iPhone, right, and in
(17:25):
many ways that's how people use it. They use it to watch Netflix,
watch YouTube, play video games,look at pictures and you know, high
clarity, that sort of thing.It's a portable screen in many ways,
and that is one side of theApple debate. On the other side,
there's the Mac right, which isa laptop computer that's really powerful and popular.
Well, you can buy a keyboardattachment for the iPad and kind of
(17:48):
make it like a touchscreen Mac,a device that Apple has so far resisted
making. So it's kind of hemmedin on both sides by the iPhone and
by the Mac. What does theiPad really do? What purpose does it
serve. It's kind of unclear.It's kind of up in the air.
And Apple has really been comfortable withthat. They sell a lot of these
things, despite the fact that salesare down. They are really the only
(18:10):
player in town. When we're talkingabout tablet computers. Yeah, sure,
Samsung makes one, Google makes one, but they are really bit players when
it comes to the tablet market.Apple really dominates in this space. I
have a question when you cutrently likeApple, which is in the trillions of
dollars in valuation, and there's onlythree or four of those companies out there
in the world. When these companieshave basically sold computers or phones to everybody
(18:36):
on the planet, how do theykeep on selling with those numbers. Well,
we've seen Apple and others really startto invest in recurring revenue strategies recently.
All right, it's one to selliPhones to people and iPads to people,
but given how expensive these things havegotten in recent years, you're not
updating your iPhone every year, you'remaybe doing it every two years, probably
(18:56):
every three or four years, andwith an iPad you hold onto that for
much longer. When it comes tohow Apple has adjusted strategy, you see
them invest in things like Apple tvPlus, a streaming service with some big
names attached to it, Steven Spielberg, oprah Winfree, John Hamm, that
type of thing that is a monthlysubscription that you pay Apple, you know,
(19:18):
five to seven dollars a month,and when you widen that out to
the broader TV market, well,that's a pretty robust revenue stream for Apple,
a company that is no longer sellingHoward hardware products as much as they
used to be. And you know, Apple TV Plus is just one example
of that. They also have AppleFitness plus Apple One, which is a
sort of cloud you know, servicethat they operate. There's many different ways
(19:41):
they've kind of thought about that onthe software side of things, all right,
Mike. Yesterday Warren Buffett said somethingreally interesting. He compared AI to
nuclear weapons and said, we letthe genie out of the bottom out of
the bottle when we develop nuclear weapons. With AI, uh, we're part
way out of the bottle and everybodyseems to be scared to death of it.
(20:03):
Is this going faster than it wasanticipated? And is the question where
all these AI developers are saying,yeah, we're scared, We're scared.
Is anything stopping it? Are thereany controls governmental or self imposed? As
of right now, there is nofederal legislation to govern the development of artificial
(20:29):
intelligence. And on the one hand, the artificial intelligence space in Silicon Valley
is happy about that, right,that makes a lot of sense. They
make AI products, they make moneyoff of this. Of course they would
want there to be no restrictions onthe development of their product. And in
fact, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, there is a movement to accelerate the
development of artificial intelligence, the accelerationistswho say that, you know, we
(20:53):
this is inevitable. We just gotto get there and then we can figure
out the details later. The otherside of this, of course, is
the concerns that Warren Buffett has raisedand others have raised that this could potentially
be used for misinformation. This couldget out over our skis and we could
see, you know, things flyingby us that we believe to be true
and in fact are just AI generatedimages or text or stories or that type
(21:17):
of thing. We actually saw thisat the Met gala last night. There
was an AI generated image of KatyPerry on the steps of the Met,
when in fact she was not thereat all. So many people believe that
bought into that. That is absolutelya concern. We've seen some in this
space, like Sam Altman, whois the CEO of Open AI, say
that, hey, we want thereto be some governance here. We don't
(21:37):
want to do this irresponsibly. Wewant people to come in and legislate.
Of course, the caveat to thatis that, you know, he does
have a vested interest in this,and many have speculated that he wants to
play some role in crafting the eventuallegislation that will come governing the eventual use
of AI and the development of AI. Some now lot lots of way here.
Are you putting out that it couldhave a negative impact. It could,
(22:03):
it will. I mean, itis automatic. Everything negative you can
imagine about the Internet has come tothe forefront. Everything positive also has come
to the forefront. Because one thingabout technology, laws and ethics are way
behind technology, absolutely, and we'veseen, you know, that's been the
case for a long time, particularlyin this country. Though if you look
(22:26):
in Europe, tech legislation has reallybeen a core focus for the European Union
in recent years, and we've seensome real effects of that. Recent legislation
in Europe has caused major shifts inthings like Apple's App store and the development
of the iPhone. There's a reasonthat the latest iPhone has a different charging
port than it in years prior,because it is a more open standard that
(22:49):
other phones use. Well, youhave the European Union to thank for that.
So, I mean, tech legislationis getting there. But you're absolutely
right that the development of technology AIis advancing at a very fast clip.
But I don't want to overstate exactlyhow threatening AI is in the present day.
There is certainly cause for concern downthe line, but as it stands
(23:12):
right now, a lot of artificialintelligence is very imperfect and pretty easy to
spot once you know what to lookfor. You know, the development of
AI images, for example, youknow, easy to mistake something like Katie
Perry on a red carpet, youknow, as real. But a quick
examination, if you spend more thanyou know, ten fifteen seconds on that
(23:32):
image, some weirdness starts to emerge, right, for example, backgrounds and
hands and things like that, stuffthat AI really does struggle with. AI
generated images really struggle with. SoI don't want to overstate the risk factor
right now because we could potentially getinto fear mongering, which is of course
what we don't want to do either. Oh yes we do. But there's
certainly, well, there's certainly causefor concern down the line, but it's
(23:53):
mostly it exists in the like misinformationsphere I think more than it does the
like will become self aware sphere rightlike the terminator future I think is way
further down the line. But likethere is certainly cause for concern, especially
in the lead up to an electionyear. All right, Mike, thank
you, of course, guys alwaysappreciate it. All right. KFI AM
(24:14):
six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadioapp. You've been listening to the Bill
Handle Show. Catch my Show Mondaythrough Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadioapp.
You're listening to bill handle on demandfrom KFI A M six forty. You
are listening to the bill handle.Show you this is KFI am A six
forty bill handle. Here it isa taco Tuesday, May seventh. A
(00:24):
couple of things. We're looking atbig, big news over in the Mid
East. Israel, Sorry about that. Israel has taken control of the Palestinian
side of the Rafa crossing, andthat's between Egypt and Gaza, which and
(00:45):
is attacking Rafa. I mean,right there on the verge of this major
attack on Rafa, even as negotiationsare going on and they look like they're
closer and then they fell apart again. A lot going on over there,
and we'll cert we talk about thatlater on. Now let's go back to
the protests. And this is thepolice side of the protests. And I'm
(01:07):
going to put together January sixth RonaldReagan protests about the war in Vietnam and
what's going on now, and I'lltry to wrap this up into one sort
of coherent thought, which is noteasy for me to do under any circumstances.
Okay, the problem they're having now, the police is trying to identify
(01:30):
the dozens of people who attack thepro Palestinian camp at UCLA. I mean
this went beyond merely protesting. Youhad the counter protesters attacking the protest.
Now you have to argue that theprotesters themselves it is not particularly violent.
I mean there's a little bit forthe most part peaceful. I mean taking
(01:51):
over buildings, yes, getting inthe way of confirmation, getting in the
way of graduating absolutely, not allowingpeople to go into classes, yes,
trespassing yes, but not utter outrightviolence. Well, the violence actually did
happen with the counter protesters at UCLA, and that's that's crime. Now We're
(02:13):
not talking about trespassing anymore. We'retalking big time crime. So they wore
masks. How do you how doyou get their identity? Can't see him?
Well, here is where technology comesin and AI is quickly quickly coming
(02:35):
to the forefront on this. UCLAdetectives are scanning hundreds of images and if
they don't, if they have facialrecognition, then that's fairly easy. Then
they just compare it to what's goingon in the world of identity theft,
identity recognition. Everybody seems to havean Instagram page on Facebook, so you
(02:58):
can put all that together. That'sfairly easy if even if you don't know
who they are. Beyond that,though, let's say you're trying to grab
someone who was there and really gotinvolved in illegal activities in a big,
big way as in super violence,like those counter protesters. Okay, you
can't see them with a mask.How about the clothes they wear? Well,
(03:20):
how do you know that? Well, let's look at identity software that
puts together Okay, they were there'sa guy there who wore clothes who put
who looks like someone very similar tohave, who's been on an Instagram image
that puts you in the same placeright the same same place, same time.
And didn't they park near the campusand there's all kinds of video there
(03:44):
and then walk to the protest siteand look at the clothes they were wearing,
look at the people they were around. Just you can go on and
on and on and put it together. And that's what they're doing. So
protesters wearing masks, I mean,it is harder. There's no question if
they grab a facial recognition, ifthey get a snapshot of your face,
they're gonna know who you are.You know, there are these protesters that
(04:08):
refuse to give they're being arrested andthey refuse to give their names. Give
me a break. You know,they're gonna find out who those folks are
in about two seconds with information that'sout there on the internet. But there
is a much much harder job whenthey're wearing masks and everybody is wearing the
caffiat the Palestinian. First of all, they are cover themselves in the Palestinian
(04:30):
flag. A lot of people dothat, and wearing that head garb the
Palestinian. Hey job, those scarves, those caffiats. You know, they
look like they all come from anItalian restaurant. They took the tablecloths off
Italian restaurant. Now they're wearing themaround their head. You've got a lot
of that in terms of covering upwho you are. None of that is
(04:51):
going to work. The technology isso far advanced. And you know when
we found out about this, howthirteen hundre January sixth protesters right as they
would describe themselves insurrectionists who took overthe capital. Very very different animal there
(05:12):
there. They were trying to takeover the government of the United States and
undo an election. Very different,but they use this technology people that wore
masks. Again, what were theylooking, what would they look like,
what did they drive? Where werethey Let's check out the clothing and then
what we had January sixth was verydifferent because anything that was put up instantly,
(05:35):
the tips came in, coworkers,family members, because these people were
trying to take over the capital.Here are the protesters is going to be
very different. Oh, by theway, you know it's against this,
the ACLU because it's all invasion ofprivacy. Invasion of privacy to the ACLU
is if you get your picture taken, for example, they want driver's license
(05:56):
with just a stick figure face foreverybody. The government doesn't have any right
to know what you look like,where you live, how you live.
So of course anything dealing with facerecognition and AI trying to figure out who
you are, even for criminal prosecution. And I'm glad the ACLU is the
ACLU is there to at least modify, at least keep the government from going
(06:16):
completely out of control. But that'sthe fight that's going to go on right
now. AI, face voice recognition. They're even going to be and they
have been able to is figure outwho people are by their gate literally how
they walk and mannerisms, and howthey point, and how they gesticulate,
(06:43):
and how they look. For example, we hear on the show. I
mean it's not video, but certainlythe timber of our voice. So I
got a great one coming up lateron about that. And that's at eight
thirty. And there's a connection therethat I'll share with you. In any
case, try to figure out whoeverybody is. Also, these gutless wonders
that are protesting the difference between whathappened in the war and Vietnam protesters and
(07:09):
this time around. Look at photosof Vietnam protesters of fifty years ago.
Nobody wore a mask. They hadno trouble telling people, showing people who
they were. Hey, we're herefor a cause. Well, these gutless
wonders don't want anybody to know whoknow who they are because they are afraid
of getting nailed. Okay, somuch for that. Coming up, I'm
(07:33):
going to compare Gavin Newsom and aguy by the name of Ronald Reagan,
both dealing with protests on campus.You've heard that phrase, different time,
different place, Oh yeah, bigtime. I want to take a different
spin here. What's going on inthe land of student protesters at various colleges
(07:57):
around the country, particularly EUCLA isreally become a poster child and a sort
of I guess the one campus thata lot of news outlets, all of
them are really paying attention to forobvious reasons. All right, so let
me go back to May of nineteensixty nine. Okay, protests, the
Vietnam War protests were really starting toramp up, and you'll see video.
(08:22):
You go to YouTube, and you'llsee a National Guard helicopter over the campus
UC Berkeley spring tear gas on thecrowd. Imagine that today it was the
sixth consecutive day of demonstrations, andcampus or were plans to develop what they
said was the People's Park, illegalassembly, you know, camping in a
(08:43):
place where they shouldn't camp. Andso there you had the governor, a
guy who named Ronald Reagan at thetime, called in twenty three hundred National
Guard troops, hundreds of highway patrolmen. They brought shotguns, rifles, bayonets,
and Governor Ronald Reagan said it allstarted because universities quote, let young
(09:05):
people think they had the right tochoose the laws that they would obey as
long as they were doing it inthe name of social protests, and he
called the student protests orgies of destruction. All right, So here we are
fifty five years later, and campusis all around California again overwhelmed by student
(09:31):
protesters, including that one violent clashat UCLA, probably the worst clash that
existed with counter protesters, they saypro Israelis. I don't know if they
were particularly pro Israelis. I knewthey were anti Palestinian, pro Palestinians.
I think they were just a bunchof thugs that came in and started beating
(09:52):
people up and took advantage of themelee that occurred. And so that's why
UCLA is at the forefront of allthis. And so how is Governor Newsom
responding? Very differently? He isno Ronald Reagan. Now he's met with
law enforcement officials and U university leadersprivately, we have him, haven't heard
(10:13):
him speak to the news media.He has directed the Office of Emergency Services
to support police response when requested bylocal agencies. Didn't activate the National Guard.
I don't know if it was necessaryor not. And he went on
social media last week condemning the violenceat UCLA and saying the right to free
(10:37):
speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus.
That's the usual trope that you're hearing. Okay, thank you. Everybody has
a right to protest, but youcan't deal with it with violence or vandalism.
Come on, guys, So whatare we gonna do? And we've
talked about this before. So Thursday, literally hours after the rest of UCLA,
(11:03):
Newsom did post a video promoting expandednational monuments showed him at a creek
beneath trees. Look at this,people think that's a little tone deaf,
don't you think? I mean?He has been low key. Reagan promised
(11:24):
to clean up the mess at Berkeleywhen he ran. Newsome is working on
homelessness and working, of course onlegalization of marijuana, which he ran on.
Dealing with the tough crime policies nowas a governor should, and the
issues are very different back then.But dealing with protests, that's a now.
(11:48):
Ronald Reagan took it as a nowand dealt with it, and a
lot of people are not happy withthe way he dealt with it, pretty
heavy handed. The Vietnam War,though, was real easy. You either
were or were against. It wasRepublicans were in favor of the war,
Democrats started moving against the war.It was pretty clear cut. This one
not so clear cut, particularly politically. Republicans are all in favor of Israel.
(12:13):
That's an easy one. Democrats aresplit on this because you've got Democrats,
even Jewish Democrats, which is amost Jews belong to the Democratic Party.
They're split on this. You know, there are Jewish protesters pro Palestinian
protesters, and where do you gowith this is there are allegations of anti
(12:35):
Semitism. I don't see much ofthat, certainly not in the world of
protests. I mean it's pure antiIsrael, pure anti Zionism. If I'm
a Jew protesting what's happening in Palestine, which I could easily say I was,
I mean, I can see theirposition. If I wasn't so biased,
i'd probably be father. Now,not that I do protest, but
(12:58):
if I were a student, andI believe this strongly, I'd go out
there and protests, and if aguy next to me has a sign that
talks about Judaism and how Jews aredoing this, I beat the guy to
a pope with a minora. You'renot seeing this going on very much,
and politically it's screwing the Democratic Party. Which side do you go on?
(13:22):
Didn't happen that way in Vietnam.Parties were not screwed up because of that.
So there are so many ramfications what'sgoing on. The big takeaway here
is let's look at what happened insixty eight, sixty nine, seventy seventy
one, look, so that we'lllook what's happening now, and we also
(13:46):
have to compare it to what's happeningin January sixth and how we dealt with
quote those protests. All right,it's time for MIKEH. Dubuski Tech Tuesday,
ABC News Technology reporter out of NewYork. Mike, as always,
thanks for joining us, of course, happy to be here. The first
event of the year that Apple isholding happens today. Let's talk about what
(14:07):
is expected, because I know youdon't get much information up front, there
is not a lot of intelligence.What is expected? Well, interestingly enough,
the event itself is actually wrapping upnow. It started ten Eastern Here
is a very early West Coast eventfor Apple unveiling new iPads. So we
actually they're just wrapping up now.I'm watching Tim Cook kind of give his
(14:31):
closing remarks on this event, relativelyshort event because it is a sort of
not a headliner event for Apple.This is the update to the iPad Pro
and the iPad Air. What welearned is the big news is really a
big screen update for the pro models. These are the sort of top end
Apple iPad devices. They now haveOLED screens for the first time. This
(14:52):
is technology that we see at playon the iPhone, also on some pretty
high end TVs. Richer colors,deeper blacks, higher contrasts, that type
of thing. So this is reallyseemingly aimed at what people seem to use
the iPad for a lot, whichis watching TV. Many people have rightly
or wrongly criticized the Apple iPad forbeing just a Netflix machine, and this
(15:13):
seems to go some way to addressingthat. Yeah, I mean, how
big a deal is it when you'retalking about high end computer stuff, I
mean high end computers laptops, becauseI know, and I was stunned when
I found out you could pay sixseven thousand dollars for one of the Apple
high end laptops. Even more insome cases the Mac pro will run you
(15:37):
you know, in the tens ofthousands of dollars. But the idea here
is that this is mainly for peoplewho either run businesses or do sort of
high intensity computing run like tech companiesand that sort of thing, So you
know that that's really where a lotof that cost comes from. And Apple
doesn't sell a ton of those typesof computers. They mainly focus in terms
(15:58):
of numbers on devices like this,like the iPad Pro, which you know
is not cheap. It now startsat one thousand dollars, which is a
little bit more expensive than where itwas previously, but even still, this
is kind of a relatively large moneymaker for them, and the updates to
the iPad are now coming at apretty crucial moment because we've seen sales of
(16:18):
this device slide recently. According toApple's Q two earnings, iPad sales were
down more than sixteen percent year overyear, probably do in no small part
to the fact that they had kindof left the old one out on the
vine for a long time. Thisis the first Apple iPad event that we've
seen in more than a year,so you know, they kind of left
this device off to the wayside withsome pretty big improvements today, they seem
(16:42):
to be sending the message that hey, we haven't forgot about this thing.
If you like an iPad, now'sthe time to upgrade. You know.
I've been looking at obviously being partand parcel of the news cycle and talking
about what's going on, particularly withexperts like you, But I have noticed
that there aren't any major major breakthroughsin the last few years. I mean,
(17:04):
this all seems very incremental, yes, and perhaps no accident on Apple's
part there. I mean, theyare a multi trillion dollar company. They've
clearly figured out something that works.And with regard to the iPad in particular,
this device is in a weird middleground. Right. When it first
debuted, people kind of called ita big iPhone, right, and in
(17:25):
many ways that's how people use it. They use it to watch Netflix,
watch YouTube, play video games,look at pictures and you know, high
clarity, that sort of thing.It's a portable screen in many ways,
and that is one side of theApple debate. On the other side,
there's the Mac right, which isa laptop computer that's really powerful and popular.
Well, you can buy a keyboardattachment for the iPad and kind of
(17:48):
make it like a touchscreen Mac,a device that Apple has so far resisted
making. So it's kind of hemmedin on both sides by the iPhone and
by the Mac. What does theiPad really do? What purpose does it
serve. It's kind of unclear.It's kind of up in the air.
And Apple has really been comfortable withthat. They sell a lot of these
things, despite the fact that salesare down. They are really the only
(18:10):
player in town. When we're talkingabout tablet computers. Yeah, sure,
Samsung makes one, Google makes one, but they are really bit players when
it comes to the tablet market.Apple really dominates in this space. I
have a question when you cutrently likeApple, which is in the trillions of
dollars in valuation, and there's onlythree or four of those companies out there
in the world. When these companieshave basically sold computers or phones to everybody
(18:36):
on the planet, how do theykeep on selling with those numbers. Well,
we've seen Apple and others really startto invest in recurring revenue strategies recently.
All right, it's one to selliPhones to people and iPads to people,
but given how expensive these things havegotten in recent years, you're not
updating your iPhone every year, you'remaybe doing it every two years, probably
(18:56):
every three or four years, andwith an iPad you hold onto that for
much longer. When it comes tohow Apple has adjusted strategy, you see
them invest in things like Apple tvPlus, a streaming service with some big
names attached to it, Steven Spielberg, oprah Winfree, John Hamm, that
type of thing that is a monthlysubscription that you pay Apple, you know,
(19:18):
five to seven dollars a month,and when you widen that out to
the broader TV market, well,that's a pretty robust revenue stream for Apple,
a company that is no longer sellingHoward hardware products as much as they
used to be. And you know, Apple TV Plus is just one example
of that. They also have AppleFitness plus Apple One, which is a
sort of cloud you know, servicethat they operate. There's many different ways
(19:41):
they've kind of thought about that onthe software side of things, all right,
Mike. Yesterday Warren Buffett said somethingreally interesting. He compared AI to
nuclear weapons and said, we letthe genie out of the bottom out of
the bottle when we develop nuclear weapons. With AI, uh, we're part
way out of the bottle and everybodyseems to be scared to death of it.
(20:03):
Is this going faster than it wasanticipated? And is the question where
all these AI developers are saying,yeah, we're scared, We're scared.
Is anything stopping it? Are thereany controls governmental or self imposed? As
of right now, there is nofederal legislation to govern the development of artificial
(20:29):
intelligence. And on the one hand, the artificial intelligence space in Silicon Valley
is happy about that, right,that makes a lot of sense. They
make AI products, they make moneyoff of this. Of course they would
want there to be no restrictions onthe development of their product. And in
fact, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, there is a movement to accelerate the
development of artificial intelligence, the accelerationistswho say that, you know, we
(20:53):
this is inevitable. We just gotto get there and then we can figure
out the details later. The otherside of this, of course, is
the concerns that Warren Buffett has raisedand others have raised that this could potentially
be used for misinformation. This couldget out over our skis and we could
see, you know, things flyingby us that we believe to be true
and in fact are just AI generatedimages or text or stories or that type
(21:17):
of thing. We actually saw thisat the Met gala last night. There
was an AI generated image of KatyPerry on the steps of the Met,
when in fact she was not thereat all. So many people believe that
bought into that. That is absolutelya concern. We've seen some in this
space, like Sam Altman, whois the CEO of Open AI, say
that, hey, we want thereto be some governance here. We don't
(21:37):
want to do this irresponsibly. Wewant people to come in and legislate.
Of course, the caveat to thatis that, you know, he does
have a vested interest in this,and many have speculated that he wants to
play some role in crafting the eventuallegislation that will come governing the eventual use
of AI and the development of AI. Some now lot lots of way here.
Are you putting out that it couldhave a negative impact. It could,
(22:03):
it will. I mean, itis automatic. Everything negative you can
imagine about the Internet has come tothe forefront. Everything positive also has come
to the forefront. Because one thingabout technology, laws and ethics are way
behind technology, absolutely, and we'veseen, you know, that's been the
case for a long time, particularlyin this country. Though if you look
(22:26):
in Europe, tech legislation has reallybeen a core focus for the European Union
in recent years, and we've seensome real effects of that. Recent legislation
in Europe has caused major shifts inthings like Apple's App store and the development
of the iPhone. There's a reasonthat the latest iPhone has a different charging
port than it in years prior,because it is a more open standard that
(22:49):
other phones use. Well, youhave the European Union to thank for that.
So, I mean, tech legislationis getting there. But you're absolutely
right that the development of technology AIis advancing at a very fast clip.
But I don't want to overstate exactlyhow threatening AI is in the present day.
There is certainly cause for concern downthe line, but as it stands
(23:12):
right now, a lot of artificialintelligence is very imperfect and pretty easy to
spot once you know what to lookfor. You know, the development of
AI images, for example, youknow, easy to mistake something like Katie
Perry on a red carpet, youknow, as real. But a quick
examination, if you spend more thanyou know, ten fifteen seconds on that
(23:32):
image, some weirdness starts to emerge, right, for example, backgrounds and
hands and things like that, stuffthat AI really does struggle with. AI
generated images really struggle with. SoI don't want to overstate the risk factor
right now because we could potentially getinto fear mongering, which is of course
what we don't want to do either. Oh yes we do. But there's
certainly, well, there's certainly causefor concern down the line, but it's
(23:53):
mostly it exists in the like misinformationsphere I think more than it does the
like will become self aware sphere rightlike the terminator future I think is way
further down the line. But likethere is certainly cause for concern, especially
in the lead up to an electionyear. All right, Mike, thank
you, of course, guys alwaysappreciate it. All right. KFI AM
(24:14):
six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadioapp. You've been listening to the Bill
Handle Show. Catch my Show Mondaythrough Friday six am to nine am,
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