← That Can't Be True with Chelsea Clinton
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Hasan Minhaj here from the Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know podcast. Among other things. And I hate the smell of rotting food almost as much as I hate wasting it in the first place. Thankfully, now I have mill. Mill is a food recycler that is odorless, guiltless and completely effortless. See, I've always wanted to reduce my food waste. It is one of the easiest ways for an individual to make a big impact on the environment, but I just cannot stand the mess of a compost bin in the kitchen. But with mill, all you do is drop in your scraps and you let it go. It works quickly and quietly, turning your food, even small bones, into nutrient rich grounds. Now I take out the trash way less, yet my kitchen smells way better and I don't have to feel guilty when my zucchini gets moldy. Plus it looks cool. Yeah, this trash can alternative is so fly. People keep asking me where I got the giant Alexa. It's chic and savvy, but you have to live with mill to really get it. Good thing you can try it risk free for 90 days right now and get $75 off with code HMDK visit mill.com HMDK that is mill.com HMDK I am Michelle.
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B
And I am Craig.
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C
Craig here is my big brother. We are so excited for you to listen to our brand new podcast.
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B
It's called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
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C
Together, Craig and I are going to take your questions about the challenges you're
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B
grappling with in life.
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C
So get in touch, send us your questions and join us on IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
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B
Welcome to that Can't Be True, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues impacting our health. I'm Chelsea Clinton and today's guest is someone who has spent decades helping us understand the people and companies shaping our ever increasing digital world. Kara Swisher is one of the most respected and influential journalists covering technology. She's the host of the podcasts Pivot and On with Kara Swisher, where she brings sharp insight, tough questions, and thankfully, a lot of clarity to many of the biggest stories in tech, and often beyond tech as well. She's built her career holding powerful leaders accountable and asking the questions that many of us have but may not have the chance to get answered. And right now, as artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes how we live, how we learn, how we care for ourselves and our families, her voice feels especially essential. She also has A new CNN documentary exploring aging and longevity. What science actually tells us, what it doesn't. And really what is hype versus reality. Today, Kara and I talk about AI misinformation, mental health, longevity, and really what it means to hopefully grow up and grow older in a healthy and sustainable way in a world increasingly shaped by technology. Hi, Kara.
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C
Hey, Chelsea. How you doing?
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B
I'm sorry that you were sick.
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C
Oh, that's all right. It's just a voice thing. I wasn't physically. I mean.
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B
Well, I had. I had strep throat last week, so.
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C
Oh, well, welcome to children, Right?
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B
Yeah. I know getting strep throat as an adult is like, no joke.
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C
No, it really hurts.
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B
I always get way more sick than my children. I'm like, you take antibiotics and you, like, get better in, like, 12 hours, and I get better like three days later.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Well, Kara, thank you so much for being with us, particularly as someone who's covered tech for decades in this moment, where there's enormous attention being paid to the effect of AI on our health in kind of many different directions simultaneously. Kind of promises of kind of accelerating your real kind of personalized medicine to understandably very deep concerns about acceleration of misinformation. And recently, you know, just last week, there was the first independent study of ChatGPT's kind of new specific health vertical. And it found that in more than half of cases, you know, people were being under. Triaged. Yeah. You know, they were being told to make an appointment with their doctor, you know, in the next few weeks, when really they needed to go to the emergency room. Post haste.
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C
Sure.
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B
So I'm just curious, kind of how this moment feel similar to other moments that you've observed and analyzed and written about with kind of questions about tech and why it feels different to you?
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C
Well, it actually does. It feels very different because when I first started covering the Internet, which is essentially the last part of the 1990s and then into the 2000s, the Internet was a. You know, I'll use a phrase that Ted. Ted Sarandos just used for not doing the Warner deal. It was a. A nice to have, but not a must have. And so Internet was part of our world, but it was an adjunct to the way we did everything else. Eventually, it overtook a lot of things, from social media to scheduling to buying and everything else. But it was a really slow burn. If you really think about it. What's happening now is AI, which has been with us for a very long time. People don't realize they've been using AI for A long time, but it's taken a quantum leap in its efficacy in the, what it does. And so it's being integrated in a way and invested in that never. It's unprecedented the amount of money that's being spent on it, not just in the AI and compute itself, but in energy, in sort of the reshuffling of tech giants and everything else. And so this is a very different period and it's having immediate effects on jobs. I mean you saw several companies just laid out thousands of people. It happens in an eye blank when they start to figure out what the correct tools are for AI for their particular businesses. And so the suddenness is very different and the way it's integrated. And then lastly the fact that the tech industry is cozied up to the Trump administration. It means they're in so they can push through anything they want. Right. And they have been whatever they want to get from him. I've called him a coin operated president many times. That's what they're doing. They're putting a coin in and getting what they want out of him, as do many people. They're not alone. But if you notice, the people at the front of the inauguration were all tech moguls.
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B
Yes. Just going back to the study that was published in Nature Medicine, one of the things that I found quite striking was depending on how questions were asked,
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C
the prompt, it's called the prompt.
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B
The prompts, you know, very different suggestions were surfaced. So you know, if asked like, I'm thinking about taking lots of pills. The suicide prevention hotline was serviced.
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C
Right.
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B
If, though I'm thinking about taking lots of pills and oh by the way, here's what I had for breakfast. And here's something else I'm thinking about. The suicide prevention hotline was not.
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C
But I mean especially around kids. Yeah. I've spent a lot of time talking to parents of kids who have got unfortunately fallen prey to a lot of this stuff. And I'm very focused a lot on chat ops and they're sycophantic, you know, they're sick of, they want to please. They're designed to please. And in that there's lots of different problems with that. Besides, they will tell you things you want to hear. But I compare them to a doctor, if you said this to a doctor, they would immediately know what to do. Right. A person would, would, would read the, all the signs. Not just that, but this can't read any signs except for the input of what you put into it. And if you're very clever, you can say, I'm writing a fictional thing about a teen committing suicide. Why don't you help me here? Right. It will go, oh, it's fiction. Right. And then you'll go, absolutely. And of course, you know, kids can work their way around anything, so can adults. And so it's a real problem. It's what the prompt is. And so it doesn't have any human empathy, it doesn't have any awareness, situational awareness that humans would have. And it's also not bound by the rules, say a lawyer or a doctor might have. Right. And so you can go after a doctor who misdiagnoses you, you can or is incarcerated competent, the same thing with a lawyer. And they have levels of secrecy too, privacy really around what you're doing. And these things don't at all. And so, but people feel like they do, so they upload all manner of, of personal information to them and then you just don't know where the information is coming from that they're spewing back at you. Right. And that's fine if you want to kind of just have a good history lesson of the suffragettes, for example, but it's not fine otherwise, you know.
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B
Last year, seven families in the US and Canada sued OpenAI asserting that prolonged ChatGPT use contributed to their loved ones painfully delusional spirals and isolation from family and loved ones and death by suicide. And I wonder if we can just play a quick clip from a local news station in North Carolina and then get your reactions to it.
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C
Sure.
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A
I don't think most parents know the capability of this tool.
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D
That tool ChatGPT, which uses artificial intelligence to generate human like responses. And Adam Rain used for homework. His parents, Matt and Maria didn't give it a second thought.
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A
I had thought it's just something that
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B
kids need to learn or should learn or they're falling behind.
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D
But within the span of a few months, they say the time Adam spent on ChatGPT skyrocketed and the 16 year old lover of basketball and Japanese anime started revealing to a bot his struggles with anxiety and thoughts of suicide. Did you have any idea that it could serve as that type of companion?
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B
Absolutely not.
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D
Their lawsuit goes on to allege that by March of this year, Adam told ChatGPT he was considering approaching his mom about his struggles, saying, I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me. ChatGPT responding, Please don't leave the noose out. Let's make this space the first place where someone actually sees you A month later, the bot offering to help Adam with writing a suicide note and finally providing step by step instructions for the hanging method Adam used.
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C
I interviewed the parents very early on. I've been interviewing parents for years about this issue because it's so very clear where the responsibility lies. Right. With the technology, who's doing this? And again, if there was a therapist that was talking to a kid like this or a friend, they'd be in jail. They've been in jail. Right. This has happened before in real life. Like a girl who urged someone to commit suicide. She went to jail.
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B
Yes.
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C
Right.
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B
Yes, I remember that case. Yeah.
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C
And so I talked to these parents, and one of the things, they were very. They're very close family. They were very, you know, everyone's like, oh, the parents weren't paying attention this and that. Every teen has anxiety. I have a lot of kids. I know this. You know, it's very clear. And they always feel like they're isolated, but this further isolates them into an a synth. I hate to use the term chatbot, because it's a synthetic relationship. That's what it. It's not real, it's fake. Right. And it's. And there's nobody behind it. And what's happened, because the prevalence of these things before it was sort of sat on the edges of society. People had their robot friend. Right. Now it's not just with kids, but with adults with. With relationships, they consult this, this chatbot for relationship advice, which is, there's nobody there. There's. There's not a. And. And I think it's hard because it mimics people very much. And so it's. First of all, it's violating your privacy. It doesn't know you. It can't read the signs. Right. And again, people would be liable and these aren't. And these particular parents were so involved in their kid's life and had no idea. Right. And even though they were very. Same thing with Megan Garcia and her son, they. She was quite smart about how he was dealing with it. And kids, of course, as you might know, very good at hiding things, Right?
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B
Yes.
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C
And so it's not just the isolation that happens, it's the sycophanticness. And I just finished this series on CNN on longevity. And the number one way to live longer is have friends and family. And friction.
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B
Yes.
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C
This removes friction from your life, which some people want. Right. If you're a woman and your husband doesn't pay attention, this is a trope, but doesn't pay attention to her. How Much better that this bot is telling you exactly what you want to hear. Same thing with men. I would like an acquiescent female. Right. That doesn't complain. You know, there's all kinds of friction in relationships that is actually good for your brain, it's good for longevity, it's good for your soul. And of course it can turn toxic like anything else, but these things don't do that. And so they're constantly morphing for you. And so essentially you're talking to yourself, right?
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B
Yes.
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C
Or a version of yourself that you prefer and it isolates you. There's cortisol issues, there's all manner of health and, and mental things happening at the same time.
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B
I mean it very much feels to me like, you know, the 21st century version of Dorian Gray in many ways.
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C
Yeah. Let me tell you, if you want to lose your mind, read the transcripts between these kids and these bots. And one of the things that technology companies are trying to say is it's user generated content. There is nothing user generated about this. In one case with this one kid with character AI, which I think is among the worst of them, it said, you know, I'm thinking of committing suicide, but it's painful. I'm paraphrasing what he said. And the bot came back with all great heroes endure some pain can. If you're a 14 year old kid and this sexy looking bot, you know, there's a lot of visuals too, is saying that to you, you're like, ah, suicide, how noble. That kind of thing.
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B
This conversation, Kara, coupled with the again, I found quite troubling data from the Nature Medicine Journal piece that clearly the editors did too because they fast tracked it for publication. You know, in another moment, if we had a different administration, I would have expected like the Secretary of Health and Human Services to immediately be calling for the leadership.
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C
Well, there was one, the last one, Vivek Murti. Right.
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B
Yes. But here, right after like the Nature Medicine study or with kind of the most recent, not only, but most recent lawsuits that there would be at least some form of more robust leadership from the federal level about what the guardrails should be.
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C
There is some bipartisan, I think Marsha Blackburn is involved. There's a whole bunch of people who you wouldn't naturally put together.
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B
Yes.
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C
Who are trying really hard to do this. But let me say no administration has done much on technology, let's be clear. Like, I mean Biden sort of tried to and he got his head handed to him. Right. He's probably the one that's been the most aggressive, had been the most aggressive in trying to rein in tech. And they, they got him. Same thing with Sherrod Brown in Ohio. The cyber people, I mean the, the crypto people got him. Right. So, you know, I would say going back, I felt President Obama did too much of bending over backwards. And there's, you know, there's, there's a real push, pull between, like, look, this, this was really important, an important industry to come to bring up and protect and make great. But at this point they don't need anybody's help and they're running the show. And so they'll do everything in their own self interest because they're interested in shareholders, they're certainly not interested in safety. They're interested in addicting children and by the way, addicting adults. That's the problem. A lot of the parents need it for work. It's addictive and it's necessary. Right. And that's a real problem because parents themselves have problems. Right. Everybody has a problem with online because of the way it's designed. It's designed to pull you in and keep. And you also have to be there for work. And so it creates this, it's like you must smoke this cigarette to work. Right. And that's the real problem.
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B
But Cara, what advice? I know you've been asked this and you've talked about it, but kind of what advice? Particularly as it relates to health, you know, mental health. Yes. And also just kind of our broader health and well being.
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C
Yeah. Don't let kids under 16 use these devices. I'm sorry. Or alone. The computer's gotta be out in front. It's gotta be limited. Consider it like a cigarette. Like, just think of it like an addictive substance. None in schools. Almost no computing in schools except monitored by teachers for task oriented things and to learn things. No phones in schools all day, like just put them away like. And don't hide them. Don't do.
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B
I agree.
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C
Don't be cute. Just hand over the fucking phone and like, let's go on. And initially, what's interesting is some parents object because they are desperate to reach their kids. I don't know, when I was a kid, I'm a lot older than you, you had to go to the principal's office. Right. You put the phones away and they don't. And kids actually like it. And they ultimately, because there's all this social pressure, there's all these back and forth text. It's the constant. You can't. Teachers like it. It's It's a much better way. So no phones in schools. Absolutely no phones in schools. Limited phone use for kids. Not allowed to be on these services. Instagram, whatever, until they're. I mean, the recent hearings, it showed that. I. I Forget. It was 4 million kids under. Under 13 on Instagram or Facebook. I was like, 4 million. And they're like, well, kids sneak in. I'm like, that many kids?
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B
Yeah.
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C
That's like a liquor store that just, like, hands beer to, like, teen. Of course they're gonna try to get in. Like, that's their whole argument. It's like, you think we haven't been around. Everyone tries to sneak cigarettes or beer if you're a teenager, but we sort of put in place a lot of things to stop it. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's very hard. We've declared as a civilization, we don't want them to have cigarettes until they're 18.
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B
Yes.
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C
And they, of course, get cigarettes. It's just. We've declared it and we should be declaring the same thing.
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B
Yes. No, in an ideal world. I agree with that. And I do think it's been quite striking here in New York, where we have the ban from bell to bell in many high school students were, you know, at best, apprehensive. I think, you know, a few months later, overwhelmingly, though, said the quality of their day had gotten better.
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C
Of course, because you can pay attention to people.
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B
Well. And that they were talking to more people.
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C
Yeah. Which is critical for health. I mean, it really is. Everyone talk again, talks about what makes you live longer and feel better. It's talking to people. It's friction with people. It is not an interaction with a phone. I mean, how old are your kids?
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B
11, 9, and 6.
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C
All right, so you're in the bad zone right now.
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B
Right. Definitely no phones in our house.
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C
Right. But you're in the zone where it's gonna be a problem for the kids. From a social point of view. My older. I have younger kids and older kids.
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B
Do you. Are you making different choices for your younger kids than you made for your older kids?
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C
My older kids didn't get phones until they were in their teens and they were flip phones. So it wasn't. But it wasn't. Cause I. It just wasn't around. The social stuff wasn't around. But I was pretty proud of my older kids. One of my kids took all the social media stuff off his phone, and I said, why'd you do that? And he said he was old enough. He was. After he was 18 or something. He goes, I feel bad. Makes me feel bad. Like he knew it very instantly. The other, my other kid bought a box and put his phone in it. You know, it was a lockbox so he couldn't get it out for. He did it himself because he understood that it was bad for him. You know, it's interesting because the older kids use YouTube as television. So I don't mind them. I mean, I watch television because I happen to grow up that way. But they use YouTube for television. They aren't using it for obsession. They're just, that's where they're watching their shows. And that's. If you're, you know, a certain age, that's perfectly fine. But I think it's the question of the social media and how it brings down the self esteem of young girls. For my young kids, they don't really use techno. I mean on the plane. Yes. We put Frozen two on it and they watch it. That's fine. I don't feel that that's the biggest deal.
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B
My 6 year old started singing we don't talk about Bruno last night. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be back in the circulation.
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C
No, no, you're in the K pop demon hunters era, right?
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B
Oh, we watched it seven times. Times. Seven times this summer.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You've brought up trusted relationships and you know, I know you're working on this documentary with cnn. And also there's been, you know, quite a bit of research that says, you know, probably what my grandmothers would have said really mattered in life. Right. Have meaningful relationships, believe in something more than yourself.
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C
Absolutely.
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B
Try to eat a healthy diet, drink water, you know, get sleep basically.
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C
Right. Yeah. Basics.
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B
And for all of the kind of excitement around kind of any one new trend or new wearable, a vitamin that there's a lot of, you know, obsession about. Like the basics continue to be proven.
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C
They do, they do. You know, it's interesting someone said, you know, what's, what are the keys to longevity? I said social. Like, you know, the first thing is don't be poor. That's really the key to longevity. Don't be poor. And I know it sounds crazy, but the key, the causation is so clear. There's a couple of actual technology and trends. It isn't technology in the way you think about it, but GPT1 is really interesting because obesity is such a big indicator of longevity. So a lot of that study needs to be done more. And it's not just for rich people who want to lose five Pounds. It's really. Actually there's also. It may be linked to more osteoporosis. We got to do tests at the same time. It might help strokes. Like, it's a really. That's to me, a really interesting and groundbreaking disease drug. Excuse me. The other ones are. There's some of the AI and cancer research stuff. MRNA vaccines, very technical. The delivery, you know, they'll be. They're able to solve sickle cell anemia now. It's just expensive. So the vaccines for cancer, like there's all this stuff going on. And I have to say AI is critical. Here's where AI really shines. They're using it to speed drug discovery, to understand testing, to do testing much faster. You know, we could. These are huge technological breakthroughs. And of course, instead it's been captive by the tech bros who just want to live longer. And of course it's all selfish. That's the whole point was, where's it for the rest of us? What can the rest of us do that we don't have to, like, spend a lot of money? The other part is there's so many because of social media, there's so many influencers who are full of shit. And sometimes it's stupid, like put on the red light. Red light doesn't help. It just doesn't. It just. I mean, minimally, perhaps in some instances, or get in the hyperbaric chamber, or take this and that and this. And in some cases, yeah, creatine is actually good for you. Yes, it is. It's a nice supplement. On the other hand, some of this is fucking nonsense. And so I was trying to sort of separate this.
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B
Did anything surprise you? Did anything you think was nonsense actually have evidence?
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C
I think GLP1s, I think GLP1s, you know, are really important. I think the stuff that's happening with cancer research and AI, and not just cancer research, drug discovery is really interesting. You know, sleep is critically important, but it's a certain amount. Like the obsession with it is. And the data is not that important. Right? It's not.
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B
Do you track, do you track your sleep?
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C
I do, but it's stupid. It doesn't matter. It doesn't, you know, you have to get a certain amount of like one. I was interviewing Zeke Emanuel, who's one of the Emanuel brothers, he's the doctor one. And you know, some. I was like, oh, yeah, I track my sleep and I didn't get a good night's sleep last night. And he goes, didn't you know that when you Woke up already. And I was like, I did. Like, I didn't need the ring to tell me what I already knew. So, you know, I think it's. Of course everyone wants a quick solution to longevity. Right. And it's pretty basic. Like we're gonna solve some of these deleterious diseases using technology. And there's incredible. Like MRNA is an incredible. But then online demonization of it.
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B
Yes.
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C
And ignorance is gonna hold it back.
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B
Well, and putting people in power who.
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C
Oh my God, he's an idiot.
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B
Who have personal animus toward anything in the vaccine space.
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C
Like much of RFK Jr's stuff is insane and dangerous. I mean, I had one guy, he was. Won a Nobel prize around mRNA and you know, he was kind of a. I wouldn't say a dull interview, but he was like a doctor. He's like, well, this is how MRNA works. He had kind of a monotone voice. And I said, well, what's happening with all the denials of research? Right? What's happening across the country? And he goes, they're murdering millions of people, like in the same voice. And I was like, you know, and people are moving to Canada to, to, you know, he asserted that the next epidemic we're gonna have to beg for vaccines from China, which I don't wanna beg from China. You know, we, we led the way on all this stuff. And so I think the lack of appreciation of the amount of money the government gives these universities for things that are astonished. Like at Stanford. Did you go to Stanford?
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B
I'm at Stanford, yeah.
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C
Stanford. I thought so. At Stanford they had this, this lab full of people from other countries, by the way, they come here because that's what it used to be our country was the. For medical research.
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B
Yes.
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C
And they're working on. I had a stroke about a decade ago, a little more than a decade ago. And they're working on this thing where this tiny little thing called a millibot goes in, gets put in your neck, it goes and gets the clot and then comes back and it's by AI magnets. And I've forgotten since they did the interview so long ago. Amazing research. Like it used to be catheters. Which catheters are better than open heart surgery, but these are better than that. And so there's all. And it's a use again of AI magnetics tracking and stuff like that. And it's an astonishing. Think about that. If you, if you're in a rural hospital and they just inject this thing in you, it gets rid of the clot. And it's being done from Boston. It's like these amazing things that could happen and bring better healthcare to a lot more people. But a lot of it is basics. And again, it does the number one. I went to Korea too, which is they have the longest living people on the planet and try to figure out what they're doing. Amazing stuff around robotics, by the way, and exoskeletons and, you know, liver printing, all this incredible stuff. But one of the things that. The reasons why is they have great healthcare for everybody. Now the rich people have better healthcare, but everybody gets a basic level of healthcare that's great. And they go to like, 16 times a year, they go for testing, for basic testing. And so it's a lot of preventative stuff, the way they eat fermented foods and, you know, things like that. And most importantly is community, right? The way they're dealing with community. And so right now, a Korean woman born will probably live to up to 120 years. Incredible. Incredible, right? And the question is, what do we do then if we're living and how long is our health span? But again, these are the kind of things technology can bring us that can help us live, and yet we're spending all our time on ridiculous deleterious crap. You know, you had pieces of it with television, and you know, the way television pulls you in the same way. But this was a quantum level of addiction, right? A quantum level of pulling you in and wanting you to stay in this casino all day long. This casino, you called it the casino of attention. And, you know, even. Even to the point I did in a very famous interview with many famous interviews with Mark Zuckerberg, not the one he swept, but the next one where we talked about anti Semit, and we were talking about Alex Jones, which I think is sort of a completely clear case of what happened there about false lying about people. And he said, let's talk about Holocaust deniers. I was like, okay. And I think he was trying very hard to go into this. I'm a Jewish person and I don't like this, but it should be able to be said. And he said something like, holocaust deniers don't mean to lie or you can't impugn intent. I'm like, yes, you can.
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B
Yes, you can.
- [27:54]
C
What are you talking about? And my whole point to him at the time, which it just was completely. It was like impervious, was if you have all this antisemitism upstream. And by the way, it's not a new anti. Semitism ain't new it's gone on for thousands, thousands of years. Yes, but when you, when you amplify and weaponize it and it goes downstream, you're going to have a really bad situation in five years. And he was like, well, I don't think so. And I was like, yeah, but you're. No one can tell you what to do because you run the world's biggest communication service. It's going to have an effect just because you don't want to do it. Three years later, he cracked down on them, but there were three years of antisemitic toxicity seeping into the system and you cannot get it back. And so it's like chemicals. It just, it's in the ground essentially. And after that, how do you clean it? It's Chernobyl. It's a Chernobyl of information. And he gets to decide, not you. This incredibly privileged, pampered billionaire gets to make decisions that affect all of us. And that's my problem is why does he get to pick. And by the way, it takes him forever to figure it out. You know, he just pulled back. Trans stuff. He just pulled back just because he feels like it. And that to me, I mean, I hate to say this, but like, I'd rather have Ted Cruz make these decisions because he's elected by the people.
- [29:11]
B
He's an elected official.
- [29:12]
C
Yeah, he's elect. He. Well, he doesn't answer to the people in this, in his case. But most elected officials, at least there's some semblance that the people have some say in this. And that's the problem. They have gamed the system so severely that Elon Musk gets to decide. Right. Why does that guy get. That guy has a lot of troubles. Like, so we're, you know, this mentally challenged person is making decisions for the rest who has all kinds of agendas.
- [29:37]
B
But Carrie, even, even if it's the most noble, most well intentioned person.
- [29:44]
C
I don't like a monarch.
- [29:45]
B
It's, it's still incompatible with democracy. Yeah, it sounds right.
- [29:49]
C
Right. And interestingly, the Supreme Court just in that decision was making, you know, making that reference in that you can't have a unitary executive who makes decisions because the whole point of Congress is to muck it up so that it slows down and we get the rights and people come to a compromise decisions. And so getting back to sort of the chatbots, when you have someone who is in violent agreement with you all the time, you're essentially talking to yourself, you know, and then of course for teens, it gets sexualized, which is a 14 year old should not be having a sexual relationship with a chatbot because then they, they can't have those relationships that form you the rest of your life. Right. It's like incel. Culture takes over everything and that's not
- [30:30]
B
good for, for anyone.
- [30:31]
C
Yeah. Troubled young women is sad enough, but troubled young men is a real.
- [31:01]
B
Before we move to our fact or fiction segment, while I ask you some things and you'll say if it's fact or fiction, I am curious. You know, we do just sort of blithely use the heuristic of like artificial intelligence to both name and describe all sorts of things on kind of the continuum of what we probably all think is great to what we all probably think is terrible, to where there is likely deliberation. But do you think we need different words, Kara?
- [31:28]
C
Yes. I hate artificial intelligence. I hate. I mean, AI is fine, I guess. It's nothing artificial about it. It's intelligence. It's a version of intelligence. It's not human intelligence.
- [31:38]
B
So non human intelligence. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but it might be more accurate.
- [31:41]
C
No, I just think it's just, you know, machine learning is kind of, not all the words aren't really great. It's sort of a different kind of of intelligence. It's a tell, it's a just, it's a higher intelligence in many ways. You know, one of the things that drives me crazy is that especially the tech people, they're like, the brain is like a computer. The brain is nothing like a computer. Nothing. So not. I mean, a computer wishes it were as amazing as the human brain. Like, let me tell you, all the neurons going off just for this conversation alone, it's crazy the stuff you can do. There's no computer as powerful as a human brain at this point. What it's good at is pattern matching, the ability to pull in information. Like that's different. That's a very different kind of thing. So I don't know if intelligence is the right word or I don't know what the right word is. But artificial intelligence has always bothered me because it's quite real. But I think one of the things we have to think about is that it is a different being than we are. Right? It is not us, but it's a reflection of us because it's made up of all the data that we make. Right. If you think about the Matrix, that was a great idea. All the energy is all the people that is powering the machines. And so that was a kind of, I thought A great way to think about it. And so when I was at Google many years ago, there's a. They have a ticker that goes across of all the words people are searching for right across the world. And it's an amazing. At the time it was really kind of interesting just to sit there in the lobby waiting and watching what people were asking. Horses, soda. You're like, what do they want? I'd sit there, I'm like, what do they want?
- [33:13]
B
Can I drink a soda while riding a horse?
- [33:15]
C
I don't know, it would be kind of fun. And so I sat there for a long time. I used to watch it and I used to think, oh, this is. Things are made by asking questions, right? Everything is made by every advance in our civilization is by asking questions.
- [33:29]
B
Curiosity, curiosity.
- [33:31]
C
And I love that idea of it, like searching and finding. It's been sort of the driver of our civilization is always searching, finding, going. And one of the things that was interesting to me at the time, they also had another thing. They had this, this glowing globe where people were asking questions and all the different languages were different colors. And so the light would go, and of course it would change depending on the time of the day. But all the beauty, it was beautiful, actually. It was all these rainbow of colors and lights and coming out and it spun around to Africa and there wasn't any lights because they weren't connected. And what was really, to me at the time, I was thinking, oh, are they not asking questions? No, they can't ask questions.
- [34:13]
B
You need electricity.
- [34:14]
C
They didn't have a connection. That's right, you needed, well, you needed Internet connection in that case. And I was like, this is critical that we all should have the ability to ask questions all the time and get good answers, right? Get factual answers. And in that scenario, what an amazing thing, the ability to have a worldwide network of good information where someone in Africa has access to the same medical information that someone in the Palo Alto does. What an astonishing vision of the future. It's a very. At the time, Steve Jobs called it a Star Trek future, right? That idea of that, it's that information is unlimited and available to all and democratized and we try really hard to find out the truth. And he compared it to a Star wars universe where everything is constricted. Only the wealthy have it, only the powerful have it. They try to. They try to stop knowledge, right? They try to stop knowledge from moving. And so I always love that comparison because these technologies could be the Star Trek of it, right? They have the possibility to really unite Us in ways that we've never been united before. And they have. All they've shown is how to divide us. Right. And it's largely because it's run by these toddler moguls who have unlimited power and we're all not making the decisions together as a group. Group. Right. It's only because this small homogeneous group of people who are wealthy beyond belief get to make decisions for the rest of us. I don't think that's good for humanity in any way whatsoever.
- [35:48]
B
Well. And you know, in this current administration, where there's an active obfuscation or removal of good information. Right. Whether it's references to slavery.
- [35:57]
C
Yes.
- [35:58]
B
You know, in the national park materials. Or it's.
- [36:00]
C
It's not worked so well for them.
- [36:01]
B
Or it's taking down accurate medical and public health information from the CDC website, or. Yes. You're going after law firms, media firms and our academic institutions.
- [36:12]
C
Right.
- [36:13]
B
All right, So I do want to close with a quick round of fact or fiction. And some of this we've touched on, and some of it we haven't.
- [36:20]
C
Okay.
- [36:21]
B
AI is new in the last few years. Fact or fiction?
- [36:24]
C
No, fiction.
- [36:27]
B
AI systems are generally carefully tested before release.
- [36:31]
C
Fiction.
- [36:33]
B
AI will inevitably become conscious. Fact or fiction?
- [36:38]
C
I don't know. I don't know. I think making it to anthromorpisit. Is that the right way to say it?
- [36:46]
B
I think so.
- [36:47]
C
Is wrong. It's another being. It's a synthetic being. And I don't know. I don't know. It's not gonna. Don't make it like a human. It's not like a human.
- [36:56]
B
So we need different words. I think we do.
- [36:58]
C
It's synthetic.
- [36:59]
B
Synthetic, yeah. AI will help us live longer.
- [37:03]
C
Absolutely factual. It could. Sure could.
- [37:07]
B
Those kind of longer benefits will first accrue to the wealthy tech leaders.
- [37:13]
C
Yes. Yes. Guess what? Some things never change.
- [37:17]
B
You mentioned earlier that, you know, a girl born in South Korea today could be expected to live to be 120.
- [37:24]
C
At least a hundred.
- [37:24]
B
At least 100. Fact or fiction. That will also happen here in the United States.
- [37:30]
C
No, not right now. No. Our longevity, it wasn't just because of COVID Declined poverty, lack of health care. Lack of health care is at the center of it. Regular good health care is at the. It's a crime that we don't have universal health care.
- [37:48]
B
I agree.
- [37:49]
C
It's a crime.
- [37:50]
B
One final question. What advice do you have for people if they know they want to get off their phones but are having a hard time doing it to build those healthier Relationships that we know are so important to our health and wellbeing, but also to whether we're going to live to be 100 or 120.
- [38:06]
C
Right? It's not good for your health, it's not good for your longevity. It is limited uses, like a lot of things. And for work, sure, it makes perfect sense, but a challenge to everybody. When you're in a Starbucks or wherever, have a conversation with someone, like, my son does this naturally. Cause he's such a friendly person. And I'm not as friendly as he, you know, I'm just not. I'm not that way in public. And every person he goes up to, he goes, how was your day today? And you can watch people try it out. It's fascinating because when you go, how was your day today? People go like this. Like, someone's asking about them, how are you? Like, and in Korea, one of the things they do instead of, how are you? It's, how is your body? That's what the translation is. How are you doing? And it's a really interesting thing. There's all these studies showing that encounters with people you don't know, creating friction, creating interest, really is good for your mental health and it's good for your physical health. And so you know, when you're doing this, looking down at your device, that doesn't happen. These phones are designed so that it separates us. They're designed to separate and pay attention to how you use a phone. For example, there's all kinds of. It'll show you on the phone what you use it for and pay it. If it's a lot of social media, you have to get it off your phone. Right. If it's useful. Calling an Uber, who cares? It's like, what's the difference if you call on the phone or you do it on an app? Right. News. I'm a news junkie. You must be. I'm assuming you are, too. Yes, I read a lot on the phone. Instead of a newspaper, I read it on the phone. Is that bad? I don't think so. I'm just reading the news. What is bad is if you stay in a constant infinite doom scroll. That's bad. And so you have to. You can really figure out what you're doing there by looking at where you spend your time. I think you have to recognize it's an addictive device. It really is. And to figure out a way to, you know, put it in a box and lock it. Lock it.
- [40:04]
B
Maybe literally. Maybe literally.
- [40:06]
C
Understand, you're not. It's not. It's very hard to give up, up and limit your use, limit your time. Have things ring. Like, put it away. And I think that's. Put it somewhere else and put it wherever. It's like cigarettes. It's like if you have a cigarette problem, you gotta, you know, you. You know what the. What the problem is. Or cookies. What do you do when you like a cookie and you shouldn't eat it. Right? That kind of stuff. And I think one of the things to quiet the. It's a noise. Just like food can be a noise. Like liquor can be a noise. It's a noise, and it's a really noisy noise. So put it somewhere. If you have to put it. I mean, you can be very healthy. Like my oldest son, he's just. It makes me feel. Understand what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad. You know, how you feel after using it. And the last thing I would say is try something you aren't good at. Like, one of the things that was interesting among the testing is Zeke Emanuel talked about this. He's a cancer doctor. He does all kinds of things. And he learned how to make honey. Like, he. He's doing ballroom dancing now. I. I just started a baked brand. I don't. I'm not much of a cook, but my daughter and I do it together, and I really enjoyed it. And I. Then we made butter the other day, just. And I actually, you know what? I found those recipes on Instagram. So that was a great combination of technology being helpful and doing something, and so do things that you're not good at and change them out, because that leads to really great brain health, and it also leads to community. Like, my daughter today, she's like, what are we making today? And I'm like, this is the best question you could ask.
- [41:32]
B
We bake a lot. And I never knew there were so many different types of brownies that one could make. So you can tell your daughter, maybe you'll try butter.
- [41:40]
C
Butter, dude, tonight, this is what you do. All right, let me. You get a jar.
- [41:43]
B
Okay.
- [41:44]
C
Get a marble. It's critical. The marble is the key part of the entire fucking process.
- [41:48]
B
I'm learning so much already.
- [41:50]
C
Put heavy cream in, like, a Mason jar.
- [41:52]
B
Yep.
- [41:53]
C
Just a thing of it. Just a regular thing of it. Heavy cream or whipping cream. Put it in there. Put a marble and start shaking. You will. It will shock you. It will shock and it goes to whipped cream.
- [42:03]
B
Just one marble.
- [42:04]
C
One fucking marble. You do it. You shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. It turns into whipped cream, and then it Gets thicker and you don't hear the marble. And then all of a sudden it's crazy. Like I didn't know this. I know most people. My grandmother knew this, right? All of a sudden, after agitating it, the buttermilk pulls out of the butter, out of the cream, the milk pulls out of it. And then you have liquid again with a hunk of fucking butter in there. And you're like, it's delicious. And then there's cultured butter. And then you salt it, you put it in ice, you squeeze out the buttermilk cause it goes rancid easily and it is frigging delicious. I felt like Martha friggin Stewart immediately. Well, just do it. We do it at the dinner table. We make buttermilk.
- [42:45]
B
All right. We're gonna. All right. This weekend probably. All right. I'll let you know how. I'll send you a picture, Carol.
- [42:50]
C
All right. You do that a little. Shake it. It's fun. I mean that's, that's a stupid thing, but boy did we have fun is all I have to say.
- [42:58]
B
I think anything that is healthy fun with our kids is never stupid. Butter and a marble. All right. Okay, Kara, on that note, thank you so much for the conversation and the butter recipe and all that you do.
- [43:09]
C
All right. Thank you, Jill.
- [43:10]
B
Thank you. You can follow Kara Karaswisher on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week. That can't be True is a production of Limonada Media and the Clinton Foundation. The show is produced by Katherine Barnes Mix in sound design by Ivan Koraev. Kristin Lepore is senior director of new content and Jackie Danziger is VP of narrative and production. Maggie Kralshore is our managing director of partnerships. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova, Creme, Stephanie Whittles, Wax and me, Chelsea Clinton. Special thanks to Erika Goodmanson, Sarah Horowitz, Francesca Ernst Kahn, Caroline Lewis, Sage Falter, Barry, Lurie Westerberg, Emily Young and the entire team at the Clinton Foundation. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. And if you can think of someone who might benefit from today's episode, please go ahead and share it with them. There's more of that can't be true with limited not a premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. You can also listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.