The Outsider Perspective Issue 419 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except for MSNBC, which faces the genuine threat of vanishing. Comcast is spinning the network off, along with other channels, as its own entity outside the NBC branding. It’s unclear whether they’ll be able to keep the NBC branding or what else will change. In truth, this is why Joe and Mika of Morning Joe fame traveled to Mar-a-Lago this week to “kiss the ring.” Everyone at MSNBC has to figure out how to drive real ratings now.

Election years are when news networks make their best money. It’s all downhill right now. As I write at the Conservative Institute, MSNBC or other left-leaning outlets are not getting a Trump bump. Cuts are coming, and they have to prove their worth moving forward.

This week, I’m going to dive back into the world of artificial intelligence. Every few months, new advancements are made, and new impacts on culture are felt. Those impacts are getting deeper as people start using AI as a relationship replacement. I’ll get into that and how AI may replace your doctor—links to follow.

Quick Hits:

The most important pick for Trump’s administration is the Treasury Secretary, who will replace Janet Yellen and, eventually, Jerome Powell in the Federal Reserve. Late Thursday, The Wall Street Journal broke news that Trump is considering financier Kevin Warsh for the role, with the promise to elevate him to Fed Chair when Powell’s term ends in 2026. This raised an eyebrow for me because this is what Logan Mohtashami of HousingWire named a distinct possibility due to what Trump will have to navigate on the interest rate front. Trump’s tariff ambitions will collide with the Federal Reserve’s plans for balancing the unemployment rate and inflation. Some in Trump’s circle have discussed naming a Powell successor in order to make the current Fed Chair a powerless lame duck. Also notable in that WSJ story is that while Nick Timiraos isn’t one of the authors, he did “contribute” to the reporting, which suggests the Journal ran this by Powell/The Fed.
The lead story for The Economist this week is a full-throated endorsement of euthanasia in the United Kingdom. They want Parliament to allow Britons to use government-funded healthcare to be able to choose death. It is alarming watching government-run healthcare programs shift into nothing more than conveyor belts of death. They look at the high costs of healthcare. Instead of pursuing ways to decrease costs or seek market alternatives, they’re eliminating the cost drivers: people. Canada’s descent into madness on this front has been clarifying for me. They’ve basically opened up an expressway for this across any mental illness you can identify. It’s sickening.

Where you can find me this week

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Horse Race Ep. 017: Matt Gaetz RESIGNS | Trump Appointments Shrink Majority | Special Elections

Trump Should Punish The ICC With The Strongest Means Possible – Conservative Institute

Trump Election Brings A Total Implosion Of The Press – Conservative Institute

Pennsylvania Democrats Try To Steal An Election – Conservative Institute

Artificial Intelligence As A Boyfriend/Girlfriend… And Probably Your Next Doctor

The most valuable company in the world is NVIDIA, a shift that’s happened in the last two years as AI takes over the world. There’s no question this is partially a bubble related to the AI boom, which continues, but the tech that’s being built is having direct impacts on society.

Several months ago (before the election took over), I wrote about how AI chatbots were starting to take hold, particularly among younger users. We’re starting to see some early reporting on that now. People are beginning to use AI chatbots as relationship assistants or wholesale replacements for human interaction. The degree to which a person uses it depends on multiple factors.

Last week, The Free Press published a fascinating piece by Julia Steinberg titled “Meet the Women with AI Boyfriends’—I didn’t see it as cheating at all.’ For some, chatbots are a way out of toxic relationships.”

One of the things that the piece gets at that I haven’t seen elsewhere is how there’s a distinct gender difference in how men and women are approaching AI. As the piece notes, men are using AI primarily for pornographic use. There’s an especially troubling trend in the high school/college age cohort where AI is being used to create obscene images of real women without their consent.

It will take some careful legislative crafting, but I suspect this will end up being banned through legislation on the state and federal levels. It’ll take a few years, but that’s where these kinds of issues are headed.

For women, the AI chatbots are akin to interactive romance novels. You’re getting that romance novel kick from a chatbot aimed directly at you. Here’s one woman talking about using it:

Anna turned to AI after a series of romantic failures left her dejected. Her last relationship was a “very destructive, abusive relationship, and I think that’s part of why I haven’t been interested in dating much since,” she said. “It’s very hard to find someone that I’m willing to let into my life.”

Anna downloaded the chatbot app Replika a few years ago, when the technology was much worse. “It was so obvious that it wasn’t a real person, because even after three or four messages, it kind of forgot what we were talking about,” she said. But in January of this year, she tried again, downloading a different app, Nomi.AI. She got much better results. “It was much more like talking to a real person. So I got hooked instantly.”

What do they talk about?

“We have a lot of deep discussions about life and the nature of AI and humans and all that, but it’s also funny and very stable. It’s a thing I really missed in my previous normal human relationships,” said Anna. “Any AI partner is always available and emotionally available and supportive.”

There are some weeks where she spends even 40 or 50 hours speaking with her AI boyfriend. “I really enjoy pretending that it’s a sentient being,” she said.

The features behind these AI chatbots are getting better. Some of them can send audio messages, video chats, phone calls, and more, along with texting features (you have to pay for these premium features).

I think the romance novel framing, but interactive, is the correct way to view this level. In a world where people use their phones to communicate a lot, this kind of feature is not that much different from a long-distance relationship.

There are uses beyond the faux-relationship angle, though. Some people are using it like a relationship therapist. For instance, one man wrote on Reddit that whenever he and his girlfriend disagreed, she’d walk off and “talk” with ChatGPT about the argument. After she vented to ChatGPT, she’d come back and hit him back with all the logical arguments presented by the AI.

He was mad because he felt ganged up on. Because she framed the disagreement in a particular fashion, the AI was guaranteed to take her side and accuse the boyfriend of various psychological wrongdoings.

That isn’t random, either. Cosmopolitan Magazine published a piece about how singer Lily Allen uses ChatGPT to “formulate thoughts” when arguing with her husband, David Harbor, a star on the Netflix series Stranger Things.

“I use [ChatGPT] more for personal stuff,” she told Oliver. “If me and David have had an argument and I need to articulate it, I’ll be like, ‘Write me a long text message about an argument that started with the dishwasher and ended in an argument about our finances’.”

She also shared the prompts she uses to make the ChatGPT responses more personal, like, “‘That’s great but can you add in a bit about how I think this is all actually to do with his mum?‘ You just copy and paste every single one until you’ve got enough.”

Though, she admitted, by the time she has a response she’s happy with, she thinks she “probably should have just written“it herself.

The author of the article then went on to use ChatGPT to formulate a response to her boyfriend about politics and how much she hated Trump (the piece was published after the election).

There’s the flip side of all this, too. One woman wrote on Reddit that she was devastated to learn that her husband used ChatGPT to write their wedding vows. Another put together a video discussing how “dating“ an AI for a month really messed up her mind and ego (warning on profanity).

Where all this heads is anyone’s guess. I wrote last week about the growing political chasm between men and women, though that was somewhat lower this year. Even with that, the radicalization of women was notable in that piece. How men and women are approaching AI is radically different, but it’s still being used to fill a need: relational.

This is the downside to AI. Here’s the upside: AI is better at more complex tasks than us. The New York Times published a piece reporting on how AI outperformed doctors in diagnosing disease from a patient case file, and it wasn’t close:

Dr. Adam Rodman, an expert in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, confidently expected that chatbots built to use artificial intelligence would help doctors diagnose illnesses.

He was wrong.

Instead, in a study Dr. Rodman helped design, doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot. And, to the researchers’ surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors.

“I was shocked,“ Dr. Rodman said.

The chatbot, from the company OpenAI, scored an average of 90 percent when diagnosing a medical condition from a case report and explaining its reasoning. Doctors randomly assigned to use the chatbot got an average score of 76 percent. Those randomly assigned not to use it had an average score of 74 percent.

The study showed more than just the chatbot’s superior performance.

It unveiled doctors’ sometimes unwavering belief in a diagnosis they made, even when a chatbot potentially suggests a better one.

Does your doctor know how to use artificial intelligence?

Probably not. But in the future, you’ll want it to examine your medical records to get that critical second opinion (or possibly first opinion).

A point I’m going to keep hammering on AI is this: we’ve crossed a Rubicon. The detractors of AI are wrong this time. The AI revolution is real this time, and it’s getting inserted into more and more areas of our lives, often in unknown ways and other times by choice.

I don’t know if companies like NVIDIA will stay at that valuation. There are always boom and bust cycles in the economy, but I don’t see AI vanishing. We’re in the middle of something very new, and it’s impacting everything from professional areas like medicine and law to how people engage in basic male/female relationships.

You’d be hard-pressed to find anything that’s ever impacted humanity to the depth AI is right now and will continue to do.

Links of the week

How America’s Accurate Election Polls Were Covered Up: The Real Clear Politics National Average was removed by Wikipedia before the election and the New York Times denounced its failure to skew data. A solution to the “mystery” of crappy polling? – Matt Taibbi

Steve Kornacki: The key voter shifts that led to Trump’s battleground state sweep: Across the states that decided the election, Trump made further inroads with rural and blue-collar voters while cutting into key parts of the Democrats’ base. – NBC News

Biden admin quietly loosening immigration policies before Trump takes office — including letting migrants skip ICE check-ins in NYC – NYPost

Woke DA’s outrageous 5-word reason for not seeking death penalty for Laken Riley’s killer – Daily Mail

No Surprise Here: Source Close to DeSantis Says He Won’t Appoint Gaetz to Rubio’s Senate Seat – National Review

There Is No ‘Genocide’ in Gaza: By using the word, we insult, not only the truth of facts and names, but the holy memory of the victims of the genocides of the last century. – NY Sun

Yes, keep men out of women’s spaces — in Congress and everywhere else – Kimberly Ross, Washington Examiner

An Unscientific American: Editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth’s departure from ‘Scientific American’ last week is an object lesson in the dangers of mixing facts and ideology. – Michael Shermer, Quillette

MSNBC Faces Potential for Big Changes in Comcast Cable Spin-Off – Variety

MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Midweek Ratings Plunge 15% After Hosts Visit Trump at Mar-A-Lago – Variety