Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / Trump's fear - Bubble BURSTS as AI drowns GOP in 'Blue Wave'
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Your thoughts on both that settlement and how it fits
- 0:02Speaker 1: with this wider revolt?
- 0:05Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is a very complex phenomenon we're seeing,
- 0:08Speaker 2: this very real tech backlash. And it's very different than, say,
- 0:12Speaker 2: like the Tea Party backlash of 15 years ago, where
- 0:16Speaker 2: there was an actual thunder, the Koch brothers, and there
- 0:19Speaker 2: was an actual reason for the racial backlash, which was
- 0:24Speaker 2: the election of the first African-American president. Both of those
- 0:27Speaker 2: things were inciting elements And both of those things came
- 0:30Speaker 2: together and created that movement. This is very different. This
- 0:33Speaker 2: is genuinely grassroots. This has come from the bottom up.
- 0:36Speaker 2: This is the American people saying enough is enough. And
- 0:39Speaker 2: why are they doing this? I would say that there
- 0:41Speaker 2: are two reasons. One is a growing sense of unhappiness
- 0:45Speaker 2: with Donald Trump and the tech billionaire buddies around him.
- 0:49Speaker 2: The other is a general unhappiness with the state of
- 0:53Speaker 2: American society in the age of social media and smartphones.
- 0:58Speaker 1: And you you use that example. The tech might be different,
- 1:03Speaker 1: but you use the example to point out that it
- 1:04Speaker 1: took this many years to catch up to something that
- 1:08Speaker 1: parents in states red, blue and in between appear to
- 1:10Speaker 1: agree on. which is letting an unaccountable company call the
- 1:15Speaker 1: shots with very powerful tools that hook their kids is
- 1:20Speaker 1: no good. But it took this long to get here.
- 1:22Speaker 1: And you're saying there is almost a learn our lesson,
- 1:25Speaker 1: enlightened public kind of mood of, wait, we're not going
- 1:28Speaker 1: to wait 10 years and be on the back end
- 1:30Speaker 1: of fighting AI.
- 1:33Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we have seen what social media has
- 1:35Speaker 2: done to our kids. We have seen the increased rates
- 1:38Speaker 2: of depression, the increased rates in some cases of teen suicide,
- 1:42Speaker 2: all as a result of social media becoming much more
- 1:45Speaker 2: prevalent in the life of American children. And we've seen
- 1:48Speaker 2: what it has done to American society, the divisions, the partisanship,
- 1:52Speaker 2: the polarization we've seen. All of that, I would argue,
- 1:55Speaker 2: comes out of social media. I mean, think about it
- 1:57Speaker 2: this way. Social media came of age in the Great
- 2:00Speaker 2: Recession when income inequality in America was soaring. Donald Trump
- 2:05Speaker 2: emerged and said the reason you're unhappy, the reason that
- 2:08Speaker 2: income inequality exists in this country, the reason those factories
- 2:11Speaker 2: are closing, the reason you're falling behind is because of immigrants.
- 2:15Speaker 2: It's because of undocumented people coming across the borders, the Mexicans,
- 2:19Speaker 2: the Muslim Americans, the brown menace, Antifa out in Oregon.
- 2:23Speaker 2: He was able to point the fingers and say it's
- 2:26Speaker 2: all the result of people who are not like yourself,
- 2:29Speaker 2: They are the ones who are doing this to you.
- 2:31Speaker 2: And he was able to do this entirely because of
- 2:34Speaker 2: social media. You know, the political scientist Henry Farrell says
- 2:38Speaker 2: social media doesn't just inform the misinformed the public. It
- 2:42Speaker 2: malforms the public. It makes it doesn't give you the
- 2:45Speaker 2: wrong information. It changes your perception of society, the people
- 2:49Speaker 2: around you and what other people are thinking. And Trump
- 2:52Speaker 2: was able to use these tools to manipulate the American
- 2:55Speaker 2: society to blame other people. Now it's been 15 years.
- 2:58Speaker 2: Trump's gotten everything he's wanted. What's the result? All of
- 3:01Speaker 2: these issues that we had 15 years ago, they're still
- 3:04Speaker 2: with us and they're much worse.
- 3:07Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you put it very clearly. And while
- 3:09Speaker 1: today you have this big victory, which I think also,
- 3:12Speaker 1: as I reported, suggests the fact that they didn't want
- 3:14Speaker 1: to go further. They want to face a jury. They
- 3:16Speaker 1: know what's up out here in terms of how people
- 3:19Speaker 1: are feeling. And and you talk about the distortions that
- 3:23Speaker 1: goes to sort of. What did we get for this?
- 3:26Speaker 1: You know, the old saying is if if you're not
- 3:28Speaker 1: paying for the product, you're the product. It's not free.
- 3:32Speaker 1: Your data, maybe what your kids are up to online,
- 3:35Speaker 1: how to market to them. That's the product. And people have,
- 3:38Speaker 1: I think, wised up to that a little while we're
- 3:40Speaker 1: still very much a phone society and a social media
- 3:42Speaker 1: addicted society. And Trump, you mentioned it may sound quaint
- 3:46Speaker 1: now because we've moved on. But at the time, X
- 3:49Speaker 1: was known as Twitter. And he would post these things
- 3:53Speaker 1: and they would ride the rage bait and then they
- 3:56Speaker 1: would ride the news cycles. And people, I think, would
- 3:58Speaker 1: rightly question some in the media of saying, well, so
- 4:00Speaker 1: he tweeted it. So, you know, you post it, but
- 4:02Speaker 1: you won't you won't even cover a somber presidential address
- 4:07Speaker 1: by then President Obama. But this guy just rants online.
- 4:10Speaker 1: I mean, it sort of was, of course, a preview
- 4:12Speaker 1: of the many ways that he broke people's brains. What
- 4:14Speaker 1: do you see in these midterm ads and the revolt?
- 4:19Speaker 2: Well, I think that what Americans are feeling is that
- 4:21Speaker 2: they simply do not trust Trump and the tech billionaires
- 4:25Speaker 2: with artificial intelligence and AI. They don't understand what the
- 4:28Speaker 2: policy is. They don't understand what the plan is. And
- 4:30Speaker 2: they're right to be alarmed and they're right to be worried.
- 4:33Speaker 2: This is potentially a very dangerous technology for individual privacy,
- 4:37Speaker 2: for national security. And we're not seeing any plan, any proposal.
- 4:41Speaker 2: any guardrails in place to make sure that this benefits
- 4:46Speaker 2: the American people and American society in general. I think
- 4:49Speaker 2: that's a tremendous revolt. I also think, you know, MAGA
- 4:54Speaker 2: can't say they're unhappy with Trump, but they can say
- 4:57Speaker 2: they're unhappy with AI. It has a permission structure to
- 5:01Speaker 2: basically say, hey, you know, I don't like this technology.
- 5:05Speaker 2: I don't like this AI data center. They don't want
- 5:07Speaker 2: to say I don't like Donald Trump and the fact
- 5:09Speaker 2: he's cozying up to all these guys and creating these
- 5:11Speaker 2: data centers. But it does create a permission structure for
- 5:14Speaker 2: people in MAGA, in the Republican Party to say that
- 5:18Speaker 2: they're unhappy with the way things are going, which is
- 5:20Speaker 2: why you're seeing all these red states, the same movement
- 5:23Speaker 2: that you're seeing in blue states.