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Podcast: Why Scott Galloway is “cautiously optimistic” about AI - but not TikTok or Meta
Listen: AI is both exciting and scary these days. It could solve big challenges but also lead to political chaos and authoritarian surveillance. On the GZERO World podcast, tech expert and NYU Professor Scott Galloway warns that AI-powered social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok can be used for espionage and propaganda, potentially manipulating younger generations without them even realizing it. However, generative AI's potential to organize vast stores of data could revolutionize traditional search engines and provide huge value in unstructured data sets, particularly in healthcare and defense scenario planning.
Galloway, well-known as the co-host of the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and host of The Prof G Pod, also expresses concern about the extreme political polarization in the US exacerbated by social media and suggests solutions like mandatory national service, more places for young people to gather, and greater accountability for social media companies. Additionally, Galloway warns about the negative economic consequences of population decline and calls for a more open immigration policy.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Podcast: We have to control AI before it controls us, warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt ›
- Beware AI's negative impact on our world, warns former Google CEO Eric Schmidt ›
- Ian Bremmer: the risk of AI and empowered rogue actors ›
- Podcast: The future of artificial intelligence with tech CEO Kai-Fu Lee ›
- Ian interviews Scott Galloway: the ChatGPT revolution & tech peril - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Tracking the rapid rise of human-enhancing biotech with Siddhartha Mukherjee - GZERO Media ›
Who is Colombia's new president?
Who is Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first leftist president? He’s a [deep breath] sixty-two-year-old-ex-leftist-guerilla-turned-mayor-turned-opposition-leader who rode a wave of voter anger to a narrow victory over a populist construction magnate last June. Got that?
But according to Petro himself, the answer is much more simple. “I’m a fighter,” Petro told Ian Bremmer in this episode of GZERO World. “I’ve been a fighter all my life in a country that has been through very difficult moments."
He was swept to power by a slim margin in June thanks mainly to young Colombians, after promising them something different in a country that's been rocked by mass protests over inequality and corruption.
Petro, who started his political career as a leftist guerrilla in the 1990s, wants to fight climate change by ending oil exploration and to massively increase social spending by taxing the rich more.
But whether he’ll be able to follow through on his promises is another question entirely.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Gustavo Petro: the guerilla-turned-president who wants to "develop capitalism"
- Hard Numbers: Petro aims for trillions, killings of Muslims rattle ... ›
- Gustavo Petro: the guerilla-turned-president who wants to "develop ... ›
- It's populist vs. populist in Colombia - GZERO Media ›
- Petro at the Pinnacle: Colombia's new president takes office ... ›
- Colombia's new president Gustavo Petro: Biden team aware the war ... ›
Dysfunction and direction in American politics
America’s political season is now in full swing. Thirteen states have already held primary elections, and every new controversy is weighed for its possible impact on November’s midterms. Media coverage has focused mainly on sagging confidence in President Joe Biden, the impact of Donald Trump’s endorsement on statewide races, and the battle for control of Congress over the next two years.
But there’s a bigger picture here. We’ve entered a historic moment of transition in American politics in which both parties are headed for crucial turning points. The Democrats are now led by a 79-year-old incumbent president who has a composite approval rating south of 41% and no heir apparent. Vice President Kamala Harris’s approval number is even lower than Biden’s.
The Republican Party is led by the twice-impeached, 75-year-old former President Trump, who left office in defeat with an approval rating of 34%. But there’s not yet a viable understudy here either. There are many plausible candidates for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination, but none is polling anywhere close to Trump in head-to-head matchups. And even if Trump’s brand of politics outlives the man himself, we can’t yet predict how combative political rhetoric might translate into policy.
In short, we enter this election year with no clear idea of where either party is headed.
Deep dysfunction
What is clear is that the United States remains a politically polarized nation. GZERO Media’s Ian Bremmer has called the United States “the most politically divided and dysfunctional country in the G7,” and that’s not a hard case to make. A Pew Research poll taken just before the 2020 presidential election found that about 90% of both Republicans and Democrats said that a victory for the other party would inflict “lasting harm” on the country.
Polarization is a serious problem in many countries, but a January 2022 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that measured political divides in countries across time and around the world offered a sobering conclusion: The United States is “the only wealthy Western democracy with persistent levels of pernicious polarization.”
Perhaps that’s thanks to the “filter bubble” — the trend toward people getting news almost exclusively from sources that confirm their biases, in part with help from social media algorithms. Whatever the cause, recent breaking news on emotive and divisive issues like immigration, abortion, and gun control will exacerbate the bitterness of America’s political animosities.
Midterm meaning
Here lies the larger significance of this year’s midterm elections, particularly as they set the table for the 2024 presidential vote.
In a world where one side sees a near-existential threat in any victory for the other side, the old adage becomes more important: nothing succeeds like success. Partisan voters want candidates they believe will defeat the other party.
For 2024 and beyond, this year’s midterms will offer voters two sets of important clues. First, in the most electorally competitive states — those most likely to choose the next president — will it be candidates who are committed ideologues or moderate pragmatists who carry the day?
Second, in those same states, will elections be decided by heavy turnout among partisan voters on one side, or will the day belong to independent voters who find one candidate and party too extreme? Not everyone is an immovable partisan, thankfully, and not every partisan takes the trouble to vote.
In short, this year’s midterms will tell us more than what independent voters think of the Biden presidency or about the strength of Trump’s grip on the Republican Party. They will help us predict how the next generation of leaders in each party will interpret America’s longer-term political direction.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
Is American democracy in danger?
American power was indisputable in the 20th Century. The US helped win two World Wars, developed a resilient economy, and in 1991 emerged from the Cold War as the sole global superpower. But today the country is facing unprecedented polarization caused, in part, by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis and the amplification of disinformation on social media. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer asks former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes whether the American Century is truly over, or if there's anything we can do to restore the country's reputation as a "shining city upon a hill."
The Graphic Truth: Did COVID spur political division?
The pandemic has sharply exacerbated pre-existent political polarization across the world. According to a new Pew survey, a median of 60 percent of people in 17 advanced economies say COVID has increased political polarization in their countries, in some by over 30 points, while just one-third feel more united. We compare the percentage of people who see more division in 2021 to their COVID deaths per capita.
How the pandemic made us hate each other
On Wednesday, the Pew Research Center released a survey on the impact of the pandemic on political attitudes across 17 advanced economies. The results are startling and alarming.
A median of 60 percent say that COVID has increased political polarization in their countries. Just 34 percent said their nation feels more united. In some cases, perceptions of polarization have jumped by more than 30 percentage points since the pandemic began.
We encourage you to read the report itself, but today we want to focus on the underlying question of WHY the pandemic has widened divisions among voters in so many countries.
Here are a few theories….
Polarization is a product of fear. For some, the virus provoked fear of illness and death. For others, it provoked fear that government would use the virus to control citizens and restrict their most basic freedoms. These competing fears underlie the ferocious debates over, for example, whether and for how long to lock down schools and businesses and the extent to which vaccines should be required for entry into public gatherings.
The pandemic put ordinary people under extraordinary pressure. People fell ill. Lives and livelihoods were lost. Children were pulled from school and confined at home, creating new dilemmas for their parents. Conflicting information and fiery opinions heightened tension. Uncertainty over how long the pandemic would last provoked dread. Taken together, all these factors created pressure-cookers within societies that fueled political resentment.
The pandemic sharpened social tensions by further dividing haves from have-nots. COVID has been toughest on people who can't work from home and those already living closest to the edge economically. Debates over fairness have hardened already hard political feelings.
The pandemic gave governments greater power to restrict movement, to close businesses, to order injections, and to direct historic sums of money as they saw fit. Those powers, which are controversial even in normal times, made governments themselves a focal point in polarized societies under extreme pressure. Supporters of those in power defended their choices no matter what, while opponents found new grounds to criticize those same actions.
In this way, existing divisions of opinion over particular leaders and political parties sharpened conflicting views on COVID. That's true in countries like the United States and Brazil, where governments downplayed risk, and in places like India and the Philippines, where leaders at times took drastic action.
COVID gave us all a reason to fear one another. Will the unmasked person standing next to me infect me? Does the masked person looking at me on the street hate me because I refuse to wear a mask outside?
The "filter bubble" problem got worse. Even before the pandemic, people were turning to cable news channels, websites, and newspapers that aligned with their partisan loyalties, and COVID intensified that trend by pushing people toward sources of information they trusted. Media outlets and social media influencers often saw the pandemic as a "wedge issue" they could use to play on pre-existing biases of their audiences to further their own political and commercial goals.
The pandemic sharpened conflicting attitudes about "experts." For some people, respected scientists became a crucial source of potentially life-saving daily information. But others saw scientists change their minds and messages as research produced new information about the unique threat created by a novel coronavirus. Shifting messages – for example about whether to wear masks, how long it would take to get to herd immunity, etc. – fed cynicism about the reliability of public experts.
OK, Signal readers, tell us what you think. Why has the pandemic sharpened divisions where you live? What do you think can be done to unite people against a common threat? And can the polarization exacerbated by the pandemic ever be undone? Let us know here.
A House Divided: Who’s To Blame?
Do Democrats Hate Republicans? And Do Republicans Hate Democrats? This week on GZERO World, we look at the political divide in America. It's widening. Can Americans all just get along?