You're listening to Wake Up Call with Jennifer Jones Lee on demand from K five
a M. Six forty. Good morning everyone, this is your wake up
Call for Wednesday, May seventeenth. I am in for Jennifer Jones Lee all
this week. My name is Jason Middleton. Today is Mushroom Hunting Day.
If you celebrate, you can celebrate in a different way in Oregon and Colorado,
where it's decriminalized to have magic mushrooms around Oakland, San Francisco, Santa
Cruz. Here in the Golden State as well, and apparently one dispensary in
La County. I read that story last night when I was prepping for today's
show, as stories in the La Times. I was in the Bay Area
before moving back to Los Angeles. I was gone for twelve years. Came
back because I missed it. But when I was up there, I was
covering many things, but I covered Scott Wiener, State Senator. Then he
was not in the state House, he was in the Assembly. He has
a Senate Bill fifty eight, which would decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms here in California as
well. Just saying it's National Mushroom Hunting Day. So I thought I'd just
surfaced some of that. Also, this hour, we're going to have more
than a couple of takes on artificial intelligence. I've been covering tech a long
time as well, and artificial intelligence is something that's touching all parts of the
economy and society. And the CEO and founder of open Ai, which created
the chat GPT bolt on that they partnered with Microsoft and Bing, was on
Capitol Hill yesterday. So we're going to be reviewing some of that. But
first we have a few quick headlines as we get going this morning. President
Biden is canceling his upcoming visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea due to ongoing
debt ceiling talks. Meantime, the President will still travel to Japan later today
to participate in the G seven economic Summit. The legal status of the abortion
pill mifipristone will be the subject of a court hearing today. A re judge
panel with the Fifth Circuit Federal Appeals Court will decide on the legal status of
the pill, which was used in over half of the recent abortions in the
US. The court has jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the
Department of Justice is charging a former Apple employee was stealing autonomous technology on behalf
of a Chinese self driving car company, Wibau. Lang worked as a software
engineer and was among two percent of Apple employees who had access to proprietary databases.
That comes from a special task force within the Department of Justice, as
this trade war with China between China and the United States continues to crank up.
In just a few minutes, we're going to talk with ABC's White House
correspondent Carrying Travers about those debt ceiling and possible default negotiations that are going on
in Washington. We're gonna start with some more stories coming out of the KFI
twenty four hour newsroom. Though Huntington Beach has withdrawn from the OC Power Authority,
leaving only Buena Park, Fullerton and Irvine as members of the Clean Energy
Agency. Huntington Beach mayor Tony Strickland says there have been too many issues.
There's not many organizations that have had this lack of transparency, unqualified leadership,
and the audience and the grand jury reports, whistle blower complaints, and again,
this is a relatively new organization. The OCPA says it's already fixed eighty
percent of the issues listed in audits, with one hundred percent compliance promised by
summer. The agency says withdrawing now only hurts low income homeowners and small businesses
that need the agency's two percent cheaper rates. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for
a man accused of abducting his ex girlfriend in Riverside County and holding her hostage
using a fake handgun. The man is charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment,
and other charges for the alleged crimes. Last week. The man has pleaded
not guilty. The hearing Friday will determine whether there is enough evidence to go
to trial. A professional bee rescuer in Ontario says the last thing you want
to do with a swarm of bees is swat at them. Eli Barkanov says,
if you do, the bees read it as an attack. In that
situation, you want to stay as calm as possible, even like hold your
breath, because the carbon dioxide that we emit it aggravates the bees. Barkanov
is best known as Eli the Bee Guy, and to prove his point,
he had me stand in the middle of a swarm yesterday, and yes,
dozens of bees landed on me, bumped my forehead, face and neck,
and I slowly walked away without getting stung. The first instinct is to start
swatting them like like they were flies or something exactly. Yeah, and that's
that's the biggest mistake. That's when they feel threatened. And if they feel
threatened, well, they're going to defend themselves. He says. The guy
who was seen on video in Encino Monday should have never swatted at the bees
in Ontario. Steve Gregory King, if I knows. On the KFI live
line, we have ABC House Correspondent, White House Correspondent, and House correspondent.
I get, I don't. Washington d DC is carried travers Hi Karen
Learning, I'll take all of it. Sorry about that. Hey, how
is the tone coming out of How was the tone coming out of yesterday's meeting
about this looming X date of possible default. Yeah. So the President said
that the meeting yesterday with Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders was good and productive.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said that it was much more
cordial than the meeting the week before. Everybody was more pleasant and there was
more agreement that the default is not an option, And even Kevin McCarthy said
that, you know, while he thinks the two sides are still not very
close, but they're far apart, he did think that the structure for negotiations
had improved and there was a better kind of base scenario right now because those
senior officials on both sides being tasked with negotiating for the next couple of days,
so, you know, odd glimmers of optimism, while at the same
time reality saying, well, we're still pretty far apart. So now they
will get down to work for the next couple of days. They started already
last night with meeting right away, continuing it today at that senior staff level,
and the President today heads off to Japan for the g seventh Summit for
a couple of days. But notably he has cut that Asia trip short,
not going to Papa New Guinea, not going to Australia, so he can
be back in Washington for what he called final negotiation. Okay, so negotiations
leveled up yesterday. You mentioned Biden's itinerary changed. Is that is that a
big deal or is that just kind of collateral damage during this process. You
know, it's always a potential when a president travels overseas that there could be
something that brings him back, but usually they try to keep a schedule because
there is a lot that goes into planning an overseas trip, especially one that
takes them all the way to Australia. He would have been the first president
to go to Papa New Guinea, so that's very significant, and they really
did not want to cancel that. So I think it's very significant that they
have cut short this trip. That shows how important it was for the president
to be back here in Washington next week to have these in person meetings.
But I do think it's notable that he called it final negotiations. He didn't
say he was coming back to continue talks with Kevin McCarthy to keep ongoing negotiations
going. He said it was final and they still confident. Then by the
time he gets back, they're going to be in that position to push this
across the finish line. It seems before yesterday's negotiation, the meeting at the
White House, at least there were some incomes when it comes to incoming things.
When it comes to other unrelated politics to budget and like immigration came up
on the GOP side. Our moving goalposts out of the way now, is
it seems like everybody's focused on the debt ceiling and the X date. Yes,
I mean yes, but also budget issues are of course a part of
this, and you know, we don't know exactly what is going to end
up in this final agreement. They all said yesterday they're not going to negotiate
this in public. We know a couple of things that are on the table
include climbing back some of the unspent COVID funding that that's worth, some of
the cuts and spending cuts could be done that there could be some issues on
streamlining opponents and regulations on energy projects, and also Republicans looking to try and
make some tougher restrictions on federal aid programs. But otherwise they all were very
clear yesterday we're not going to negotiate this in public, and they were not
going to get into the nuts and bolts of what they talked about. Karen,
thank you for your time this morning. I hope we can talk later
this week. I have a great day. That was ABC White House Correspondent
Karen Travers. Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the
KFI twenty four hour news room. The La City Council has decided against formally
asking the city planner to stop a hotel from being built in Benedict Canyon.
The motion failed on a seven to seven split. People showed up to yesterday
city council meeting to both support and protest the hotel. This man says,
the hotel does not belong in Benedict Canyon. We have a party house problem
in the canyon. This is a permanent party house twenty four to seven.
The hotel's developers says guests would not be parting loud because the hotel would have
noise restrictions. The hotel at hand would be home to fifty nine rooms.
Eight single family homes would also sit on the more than thirty two acre property
in La Blake Trolley k if I News. Executives from Silicon Valley Bank and
Signature Bank have appeared before the Senate Banking Committee for a hearing on the bank's
failures. Committee chair Sharad Brown stead, in his opening statement, the banks
were fatally mismanaged and executives put short term profits ahead of everything else. The
same answer we find to most questions about big bank failures because the executives who
are getting rich. Brown says the executives were paying out bonuses up until the
hours before regulators seized their assets. The head of the artificial intelligence company that
makes chat GPT has told Congress government intervention will be critical to mitigating the risks
of increasingly powerful AI systems. I think if this technology goes wrong, it
can go quite wrong, and we want to be vocal about that. We
want to work with the government to that from happening. Open AICEO Sam Altman
testified yesterday at a Senate hearing. His startup got the public's attention when it
released chat GPT late last year. Lawmakers expressed concerns about the ability of generative
AI tools to mislead people, spread falsehoods, violate copyright protections, and upend
the job market. This is another revolution in the tech sector. You think
about it, you go back to the PC revolution in the Internet revolution,
and now we have the AI revolution, and we have Jane Wells and Mike
ebusculated this hour to help us get our arms around some of this. Pro
choice activists have rallied around, rallied outside North Carolina's capital over an abortion band
that passed despite the governor's veto. Republicans in the state House and Senate work
together to override Governor Roy Cooper's veto. Yesterday, Cooper only needed one Republican
to vote against the party to keep the abortion laws intact. This woman says
she's been fighting against the bill for months and for it to turn so quickly
was overwhelming. We're not done. We're upset right now. We're going to
collect ourselves and we're gonna gather, but this is not over. The twelve
week abortion band goes into effect July first. It has exceptions for medical emergencies,
cases of rape and incest, and life limiting fetal anomalies. Officials in
China have sent crews to search for thirty nine crew members of a fishing boat
that capsized in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Chinese media reports the accident
happened early yesterday with a crew that includes seventeen from China, seventeen from Indonesia,
and five from the Philippines. China is believed to operate the world's largest
fishing fleet. Many of them stay at sea for months or even years at
a time. At five thirty five. It's Biz Bite Wednesday, so Jane
Wells will join us. She's from CNBC and from KFI. Jane is bringing
some news on the often teased, never delivered or not yet cybertruck from Tesla.
So we'll do this week in elon musk. Jane has a take on
AI as well, But right now let's welcome in Rich DeMuro Riches, the
tech reporter at KTLA here in Los Angeles and more importantly has a Saturday show
here on KFI as well. Good morning Rich, Hey, Good morning Hugh
Jason. Good to talk to you. An AI founder Sam Altman telling Congress
that AI regulation is essential. So what was your hot take on what you
saw yesterday? Well, I think that everyone is sort of agreeing that this
is a place that needs to be looked at. Now. The regulations are
going to be tricky because it's a technology that is ever changing and we're not
really sure what it's capable of, and we also don't want to stop the
progress of this. So I think it's a very tricky place. But everyone
that's involved in it sort of agrees that, yeah, there are definitely some
downsides to this that we need to be very aware of, especially as AI
evolves gets smarter. And the thing I think most people are concerned about is
when they start building robots with generative AI that starts to think for themselves.
Yeah, I agree. Do you think that do you get the tone that
we learned from past missteps when it comes to regulation and technological advances. Well,
that's a tough fun because I think that what happened with like Google and
Microsoft and all these other companies that you know, the web one point zero
companies, they were left unchecked. You know, everyone celebrated their existence,
they celebrated what these companies were able to do, But the reality is they
were able to grow in a way that was just sort of unchecked in any
way. And that's good because they were able to get big. But it's
bad because now we're seeing the results of that. So I think that people
don't want a rehash of that. But at the same time, there are
so many benefits this artificial intelligence technology for so many different business lines that people
want this to happen. But we just wanted to happen in a safe way
that doesn't also ruin everything else about our lives. I know that I have
to ask myself this every week for my show. I listen to your show,
you have to mention AI as well. Are we given this the proper
amount of scope? Do you think? Is it too much coverage to little
coverage? What's your hot take on that one? Oh? I mean I
could make my entire three hour show about AI every single week. It is
the biggest thing happening in our lifetime at this point. We saw the Internet
happen, we saw evs happen, We've seen a lot of change in the
technology, you know, things like mobile phones. But this changes everything because
like we saw the Internet built into every device, including coffee cups, we're
going to see AI built into every single industry in this world. There is
nothing that it will not touch, and so it is big and it's everything.
So I think we're not. I mean, I think if we're giving
it the right amount of attention, I don't even think we have begun to
understand the capabilities of this just yet. All right, well, thank you
for reinforcing my take on it as well. And if we're as long as
we're hour measuring, yours is three hours, minds two hours on Sundays.
Okay, Web one point zero let's go to Google. It's going to start
auto deleting accounts that haven't been used in a while. I haven't seen this
one yet. What's going on? Yeah, this is uh, you know.
Google says that look, if an account is sitting there dormant, hackers
can get into it much easier and use it to spread malicious things software,
emails, whatever. So they haven't really done this before, but they are
going to start deleting accounts that have not been used in two years. So
if you open up an email account a couple of years ago you forgot about
it, they will delete that starting December twenty twenty three. Now keep in
mind, this is going to be a slow, gradual thing. They're not
just gonna go ahead and delete everything automatically the first day. They're going to
start with accounts that were opened and never used again. So you know,
you might have opened it back in the day when Gmail first came out and
then he said, ah, never mind, and he never used it.
And they're going to do this slowly unlike a lot of other services. This
is also important. They're not going to put that email address back out there.
So if you have an email address and they close that account, someone
else will not be able to claim that email, which is nice. Yeah,
to keep in mind, this does affect Gmail Docs, Drive Meat Calendar,
YouTube, Google Photos. The only thing is if you have a YouTube
account and you have a video uploaded to it, they will not delete that
count because a lot of times that's kind of for posterity reasons. If this
is a security concern, why are they waiting until December to do it to
start diffrun? Well, I think this is the first time they've done this
in a big way, and so they want to make sure they do it
right. Because Google is a big company. A lot of people have data
saved with Google. And look, I mean Google still has a lot of
security. You know, they have a lot of security precautions in place that
work today. This will just kind of increase that as we see more fishing
and all that stuff happening. That makes sense. Okay, let's move over
to Apple because this kind of ties into AI a little bit, and that
is I had Joanna Stearn on my show and you've I believe you've talked about
this too the Wall Street Journal where she trained AI to use her voice and
her picture in order to try to fake identify herself or other places. Apple
is going to introduce an assistive feature. What's up with this one? Yeah,
so this is for Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which is tomorrow. Apple
showed off a whole bunch of new accessibility features. I think they're really a
leader in this area, making phones accessible and usable by everyone, no matter
what your abilities are, and so they've already been really good about this,
but now they're introducing a whole bunch of new stuff. The one that you're
talking about is called Personal Voice. So you spend fifteen minutes on your phone
reading a whole bunch of different phrases, and then your phone will recreate your
voice. And so what's that good for. It's not for what Joanna was
using it for. It's really form, you know, anyone who may be
at risk of losing their speech due to some sort of disability, so for
instance als and so this will enable you to speak even though your voice box
no longer works. But of course many many people will be trying this out
just for the curiosity factor to see, and that's not the only feature.
They're also making a very simple phone screen, so all the apps are very
big, buttons very simple to use might be good for you know, Grandma,
grandpa, that kind of stuff, but also folks that have different disabilities.
And so I think that they're doing a real lot in this area and
these things are coming later this year. This is part of Apple's corporate DNA.
Going back to Steve Jobs, in a lot of ways, he wanted
the watch and other features to be health oriented. Am I mis remembering that?
Well, it's interesting when the watch first came out, it was really
more app oriented, and now it has become a force with fitness because they
realized that people didn't really care about checking Instagram on their phone or getting an
Uber sorry from their watch, and so they have really tripled down for the
watch on health and also with the phone. So now, by the way,
when they came out with Apple Fitness, you had to have an Apple
Watch and they said it was required, and then all of a sudden a
year later, they said, oh, never mind, you can just use
your phone now. So if you haven't tried Apple Fitness in a while,
you can use just your iPhone. You don't even need an Apple Watch anymore.
But yeah, Apple is really moving ahead in accessibility and fitness in a
big way. We didn't have that this one slated. Rich I just want
to ask you a hot take role on Apple classical music. Have you seen
any feedback on that one? Is it positive? Negative? Or is it
nobody really noticing yet? I'm not hearing a lot about it, but I
used it for a bit and I thought it was actually really neat, and
I think that if you are into classical music, or even if you're not,
it's a really neat way to rediscover that genre because Apple did a lot
of work, as they typically do in you know, recreating artwork and recataloging
all of these tunes, and so check it out. I mean, it's
included if you have Apple Music. So the only thing is it's not offline.
You can't like listen to it on a plane because you can't download the
music. You have to listen to it streaming for some odd reason, I'm
not really sure. Okay, cool, Well, thanks for that update.
And I didn't mean to bring that on you, but it just just popped
in my mind. We're talking about Apple. I thought i'd bring that one
up because it's kind of new. Yeah, sure, rich to mur here
for you, Jason. Thanks rich Richard Murrow, of course, is a
tech reporter at KTLA, but he his show was on satur Days here on
KFI, a three hour block with Rich Rich Thanks for your time this morning.
All right, Jason, have a great day. Thank you. Let's
get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour
news room. The West Hollywood City Council has voted to add four LA County
Sheriff's deputies to the city to help address rising crime. The council last summer
voted to remove four deputies, replacing them with unarmed security ambassadors to patrol the
streets. One local resident says West Hollywood is home to many people in the
LGBTQ community, making it a targeted area for crimes. Seeing the security ambassadors
and videos that are like viral online, just standing there and letting things happen
just perpetuates the other residents say, people who know there will be no repercussions
for their actions will continue to burglarize and rob the community. The city said
Monday they are willing to add more officers in the future in West Hollywood.
Chris Adler KFI News Right now on wake Up Call, we have Jane Wells
on the line for a biz bite breakfast chat. We're gonna get the AI
soon. Good morning, Jane, We're gonna start. I'd like to start
with Silicon Value Bank. Could please? So AI was not the only thing
on Capitol Hill yesterday. No. No. The former CEO of Silicon Valley
Bank, Gregory Becker. It's the first time he's spoken publicly since the bank
failed, and he basically said it was everybody's fault. Everybody else's fault,
not his. He said he felt terribly sorry that the bank failed, but
that you know, the FEDS started raising rates after promising to keep rates low
for the foreseeable future, and you know, he was caught off guard.
And then people started worrying about the bank on social media, and that caused
to run on the bank. You know, it went on and on and
on. He was blaming the board, blaming depositors, and finally a senator
said, hey, is any of this your fault? And he paused for
a while and he said, you know, I can't really think of anything
I did wrong. Well, you know, Jason, maybe if the bank
had not gone for months and months without someone in charge of risk management,
or maybe if the bank had started changing its capital strategy when it became clear
the Feds we're going to continue raising rates. I mean, there are a
bunch your regional banks that didn't tank, and Silicon Valley Bank did and he
really took no responsibility for it at all. Yeah, changing capital strategy or
you know, reading John Ford's newsletter from six months ago that he called it
out. And I know he's a colleague of yours at CNBC. I used
to work with him when I was in the Bay Area as great. So
yeah, I mean, you're right, it was this was mismanagement. It
sounds like the buck didn't stop at the CEO desk. The buck just got
bought up by JP Morgan Chase another well, you know, one senator said
his story sounded a lot like you know, you're telling me the dog ate
my homework. Now, if anyone else is to blame, you could blame
the FED in part for not paying attention, because it's supposed to be regulating
the bank and it was asleep at the wheel. But it was just a
strange, you know how these CEOs can be, and this was one of
those where the guy just wasn't really reading the room. Yeah, exactly.
And the FED did do some self reflection when it comes to it's yes enforcement
as well. So j Powell will have his time on the hill pretty soon
too. You mentioned CEOs. Let's stay with one. Let's do this week
in Elon Musk. Elon says the cyber truck is really truly coming this year,
honest, it says, And do you think that's really truly honest?
Well do you, Jason? I mean you know the guy's history on predictions
and timelines. He first, I think the cyber truck. He had a
shareholder meeting yesterday, which, by the way, I don't know if you've
ever covered shareholder meetings, but there I love them to actually go to one
when you can, because people who who you'd only have to own one share
to be able to go to the shareholder meeting and stand up and get the
microphone and ask the CEO something and like one guy was there dressed as a
robot wearing a cowboy hat and asked something about you know, are you going
to make an RV? But Elon, among many things yesterday said that yes,
the cyber truck is really coming later this year. He also predicted that
once they start production, they'll sell between two hundred and fifty and five hundred
thousand a year. Okay, and you know we're still waiting on the roadster
in the Semi, which were promised, you know, originally back in twenty
seventeen. So oh and one other thing, he said, the Model Why
is going to be the best selling car on Earth in twenty twenty three.
So I don't know. If I were taking one side of the bet,
i'd probably short the prediction. Yeah, but he is saying the cyber truck's
really coming. Look, I know Elon gets a lot of binary responses.
I understand that, but CEO for him is cheerleader, executive officer in a
lot of ways. And remember when he when he was putting when you put
the Semi on stage, there was a there was a mishap on the on
the prototype launch as well. So yeah, but to your point, I
don't go to shareholder meetings anymore. I'd kind of just do the earnings calls
and just kind of lay back and let them talk. But uh, but
that does sound entertaining with with Elon. Yeah, I mean, don't forget.
Oh you said you mentioned the Model Why. I just wanted to point
out that an idea about Muskie is S three x Y. He wanted it.
He couldn't get the Model E from Mercedes because he wanted all of his
models A spell sexy. Oh you're kidding. Oh you're kidding. I didn't
know that. That is so typical. It's right. Let's move on to
chat GPT because they were. Sam Alban was on Capitol Hall yesterday. I'd
love to get your take on him trying to get in front of regulation.
Did we learn a lesson from past like PC revolutions, Internet revolutions? Are
we in front of AI? Oh no, we're not in front of AI.
We're never in front of these next things, and certainly Congress never is
because Congress, I mean, look, you've got Diane Feinstein as a senator,
So no way, we're not. This is this is something we need
to pay attention to. I do think there were a couple of things interesting
that came out of that. Sam Altman saying that we need to do this,
you know, with some precision, and that maybe we need to have
new models of AI A registered and have to go through testing before they're released,
and the woman who's the head of security at IBM Privacy was saying things
that were very good I thought like there needs to be transparency that if you're
using AI, there needs to be something that tells you you're not interacting with
a human. But I have to tell you, Jason. For the last
couple of weeks, I've been talking to chief financial officers at companies big and
small, publican private, all over the West, and to a person to
a company they are using AI. They want to roll out more generative AI.
They want to do it for a variety of reasons. It's so fast,
it makes operations so efficient, labor is still tight, and this can
replace a lot of people, and frankly, you know, it can replace
people that they that they do have and save money. So this is something
that they are all saying, this is the next big thing. Now we've
heard that about other things, true, but like the cybertruck. But this
is the thing since the Internet that's going to revolutionize everything, and we don't
know what we don't know. I think the question is, you know,
if they can have an AI. Jennifer Jones lee that AI will never go
on vacation, you won't need to be filling in. It doesn't need health
insurance. And at a certain point can the AI Jennifer Jonesley or Jason Middleton
or Jane Wells write stories that sound almost real. I don't know about you,
but when I read certain news stories, particularly about earnings, I can
tell that was generated by an algorithm. I can tell still that it was
not written by a human. But that is going to get more and more
difficult to discern. I think I think I'm definitely with you on that,
and especially with voice. And we just talked to Richard Murrow about Apple's feature
about recording voice. Now that's that's for a different health purpose or a disability
purpose. But at the same time, you know it's coming. It's quick,
and I don't think we're overplaying our hand here. Last one I want
to ask you about is something that I don't have any real affiliation with,
and that's having an office crush. And it says office crushes are okay.
My office crushes with our our coffee machine in the calf. Why our office
crush is going to be okay? Well? This is This was from the
New York Times. New York Times has an office advice column written by somebody
called Roxanne Gay and somebody said, I have a serious office crush on a
co worker. Not a little crush, a huge crush quote far more than
anything I've felt in a long time. Now, the person said, I
know that work in romance don't mix. Have no idea if the other person
feels the same way. So what should I do? Well, first of
all, Jason, what would you do? What would you advise someone who's
got an incredible office crush get a new job? Call HR? I don't
know. I don't know that. I don't I'm staying away from this one.
I'm a middle aged white male. There's no way I have anything to
you. You know what, Yes, your opinion no longer matters about anything
apparently anyhow, rock sand said. Roxanne said, enjoy the fun parts of
the crush, the thrill when the guy walks in the room. Though in
general, romance doesn't wix with work and should definitely be avoided if there's a
power imbalance. But other than that, this is what Roxanne said. A
crush is a healthy thing. Don't overthink it. At the end of the
day, if he really really like this person, why not shoot your shot.
The worst he can do is say he's not interested, which will hurt.
But you can handle it and have information about how to proceed and if
he says yes to a date, well and if everything is possible. My
thing is this my reaction as Jane is. But there's something about having the
crush and never acting on it which is kind of fun too, Like he
got sort of a secret crush in your footment. But then if you ask
somebody out, then it becomes the whole thing. So I would say,
enjoy the thrill of the crush, but put a lid on it right on.
I'm with you. That's good stage coaching advice from Jane Wells. Thank
you so much. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. Jane,
hope we could talk again soon. Take care that CNBC's and kafis Jane Wells.
President Biden is canceling his upcoming visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea,
where he would have been the first president to visit. That's due to ongoing
debt ceiling talks. Meantime, the President will still travel to Japan later today
to participate in the g se An Economic Summit. The legal status the abortion
pill myf apristone, will be the subject of a court hearing today. A
three judge panel with the Fifth Circuit Federal Appeals Court will decide on the legal
status of the PILL, and the Department of Justice is charging a former Apple
employee was stealing autonomous technology on behalf of a Chinese self driving company. It's
five fifty on your wake up call it. ABC Tech reporter Mike Dubuski is
on the line. When chat gpt launched late last year, and then Microsoft
rolled out a partnership with open ai for Internet searching earlier this year, the
world moved pretty much to the edge of its collective seat. Mike, thanks
for giving us some time this morning. Yeah, absolutely so. Sam Altman,
who is the CEO of open AIS, he mentioned there was before lawmakers
yesterday to answer questions about not just what this technology can do, but also
how it can be regulated. And Richard Blumenthal is on the chair of this
particular Senate subcommittee. He actually kicked off this hearing with piece of writing that
was actually written and voiced by chat GPT. So here's a little bit of
what that sounded like. Too often we have seen what happens when technology outpaces
regulation, the unbridled exploitation of personal data, the proliferation of disinformation. Again
that was not Richard Blumenthal, though it sounded just like him, and sam
Altman was pretty clear eyed about some of the risks of this type of technology,
and he brought with him some solutions he thought. He suggested that lawmakers
could create a new government agency that would sort of act like a DMV for
AI, where they would issue licenses to start up companies, and if those
companies were to run a foul of certain government rules, then they could have
their licenses revoked and they could not develop the technology anymore. He also suggested
some new tests that these companies could do on their AI system so that they
self replicate and ex filtrate into the wild, in other words, that they
don't go rogue and do things that the creators don't intend them to do.
Sam Alman also inviting audits by independent third parties to sort of supplement the government's
work here. So a significant moment that a big tech CEO appearing before Capitol
Hill and saying, yes, come regulate my industry. Yeah, Sam Altman,
the newest tech billionaire vying for Times Person of the Year already this year.
Look, Mike is ai AI is in a hype cycle. I keep
referencing it as the PC revolution, then the Internet revolution, and now we
have the AI revolution. Some small ones in there too, like the iPhone
and the air fryer. But is um But are we covering this right?
There's a lot of clickbait headlines, is what I'm saying around AI. Do
you think that we're covering this right? You know, I think in the
tech journalism world, you're right that there is a concern that this is just
all hype and it's going to go away in a year, and you know,
next year we're gonna be talking about something completely different. But I mean
it's important to take a step back and just recognize where we're at when it
comes to the tech world right now. You and I have talked about this
before, Jason. The idea that you know, during the pandemic, you
know, it was it was a great moment for the big tech world.
We were all spending you know, sixteen hours a day in front of our
computer screens. We were buying new things, we were supplementing our home offices
with new tech. You know, things were really good. Now, as
the pandemic has sort of eased and people have gone back out into the world,
the tech world needs a hit right, Like, there's all these layoffs
happening. The digital ad market is shrinking, We're reevaluating our relationship with social
media and other pieces of technology. So the facebooks and the Apples and the
Googles of the world all are looking around and saying, what's the next thing
that's going to get people really excited? Facebook now Meta thinks that's going to
be the metaverse. Crypto was a big hype cycle as well, and that
you know, has been through a pretty rough year. I think it's fair
to say, now AI is this other thing, and you look at Microsoft
and Google hitching their their wagons to this particular hype cycle, and that seems
to be a you know, a legitimizing factor that these big tech companies see
this as a realistic, you know, future for the tech industry. And
it's not like it's necessarily going to be one or the other. It can
be both, it can be none of these things. But yeah, I
think I think it's important to look around and just kind of take in the
broader context because you know, it's it's it's not like our phones change that
much any you know, every year anymore, and it's not like you know,
social media is radically changing. In fact, you know, I think
we're maybe reevaluating you know, how we think about that sort of technology.
So I think that's the moment that we're in. Well, Mike, we've
got about five months of data since chat GPT Open AI, Microsoft and being
Google and barred. Let's talk about where AI is being effective so far.
Has Microsoft made a dent in share when it comes to Internet search when it
comes to Google's monopoly, So no, I don't think yet when it comes
to you know, the search functionality, but I do think it's worth looking
back to last week Google Io, which was their developer conference. They showed
off a bunch of new hardware devices, you know, a folding pixel phone
and some new yeah, cheaper phone and that sort of thing, but they
also spend a fair amount of time talking about the role of AI and their
technology. They introduced this new segment of their company called Google Labs, where
we as just you know, lay people, as average tech consumers, can
sign up and basically beta test what Google is working on, to get a
kind of hands on look at some of the AI tech that they have,
you know, going on kind of behind the scenes. There's an AI music
generator that they're working on, for example, But the one that I thought
was really really fascinating was called the Search Generative Experience, where they are bringing
bard, which is their AI chatbot, a little bit closer to Google Search,
which is their core technology. Right. Google search has been pretty much
the same for about twenty years now, right, like the you go to
Google and it answers your question in the form of a bunch of different links.
And Microsoft, as you alluded to there, did seem to kind of
edge in on Google's territory by integrating AI into its search engine, bing saying
Okay, this is how we're going to now challenge Google, being has been
a perennial also ran a second place to Google, We're going to add in
AI to maybe differentiate ourselves a little bit more. Google when it rolled out
Barred introduced that chatbot as a separate website, you know, distinct from its
its main you know, search engine. Now it's getting a little bit closer
to that core technology, and I think that's a really really significant move.
So yeah, I think in a lot of ways, you know, people
are talking about what's the future of AI, I think a lot of it
is already here. Wow, that's uh. I'm glad that we're all kind
of covering it with with wide eyes. I do think that I think that
open sources is a big thing here too. And I do think that I
honestly think that the senators on Capitol Hill should let their staffers ask some of
the questions when these tech guys get up on there. I think that I
think there's an age differentiation that is very real, definitely, And you know,
the average age of a US congress person, I believe is in their
late fifties. I think the Senate's even a little bit older. I think
it's into the sixties. And you know, we all remember when Jeff Bezos
and Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, you know, appear before Apitol Hill.
Not only were they very combative hearings, they were also you know, sometimes
the lawmakers, you know, we're maybe not the most informed. Maybe.
You know there's that exchange between Or and Hatch and Mark Zuckerberg in twenty eighteen
when he said, well, how do you make money on Facebook? And
Zuckerberg rather incredulously said, well, Sunder, we run ads. I think
we have come a little further along since then. You know, maybe the
staffing of certain lawmakers has gotten a little bit more tech educated. Although it's
worth mentioning too that I spoke to um Neil Chilson, who is the former
chief technologist at the FTC yesterday and he said, you know, it's worth
the lawmakers maybe taking a step back, maybe taking a pause on rushing into
legislating this and making sure that they understand the technology fully as well. So
you know, it's a fair amount of work to be done on that front.
But it's also maybe speaks just how complex this issue is. ABC Tech
reporter Mike Dubuski. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time
twice this week, Maybe one more time later this week. Sure, yeah,
all right, take care takes Thanks a lot, Mike. Okay,
bye, Hey, before we get to the top of the hour, the
best part of waking up really may be folders in your cup. Two out
of three people surveyed by market research company One Pole say a steaming hot cup
of coffee is their go to first drink of the day. Fifty nine percent
say coffee is the first thing they reach for when they get to the office.
Almost half say ice coffee is a good way to start the work day,
followed by water at forty five percent in flavored water at thirty percent.
Three out of four survey'd say it takes two or more cups of Joe before
they really start to feel productive. All that coffee adds up to averaging over
six dollars for each coffee run, with an average of three and a half
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run, that's twenty eight hundred fifty five dollars a year. Amy King KFI
News Southern California weather from KFI low clouds and fog in the morning and then
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