The Outsider Perspective Issue 441 | The Beltway Outsiders

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Good Friday Morning! Except for the Chinese student who had to be rescued twice on Mt. Fuji in Japan. That’s right, twice. Japanese authorities rescued him the first time and got him off the mountain after he experienced elevation sickness.

He returned up the same mountain four days later because he “forgot his phone” and had to be rescued again for the same reasons. Locals were angry he had to be rescued a second time. If you’re wondering if you’ve got it bad, you didn’t have to get rescued off the same mountain twice in a week.

This week, we’re diving back into AI and chatbots after a report exposed Meta/Facebook for unethical practices – links to follow.

Quick Hits:

Mike Waltz gets “promoted” to UN Ambassador. In reality, Waltz was forced out of his national security position. Mark Halperin broke the story on his daily 2Way show Thursday morning, triggering a scramble at all other outlets to confirm the news. The Signal app is the cover story here, but Halperin says that Waltz didn’t fit with the White House, with Rubio in particular not liking him. Halperin also added that this likely tees up Pete Hegseth, who has a warning show across his bow: get it right this time. Halperin doesn’t believe Hegseth can do that and will be the next one out. Halperin correctly reported Biden was dropping out before anyone. He’s had several other breaking stories. I take his reporting on this seriously because the White House purposely tipped him off first. As such, take his commentary seriously.
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Where you can find me this week

Please subscribe, rate, and review The Horse Race on YouTube — the reviews help listeners, and readers like you find me. Make sure to sign up for the Conservative Institute’s daily newsletter and The American Almanac.

California’s Liberal Turn Destroys Natural Advantages – Conservative Institute

Amazon Gets Caught In China’s Crosshairs – Conservative Institute

China Comes To Trump’s Bargaining Table – Conservative Institute

AI ChatBots take over the internet… and world.

I wanted to check in on artificial intelligence this week for two reasons: 1) it’s been a while, and things continue to advance rapidly, and 2) the Wall Street Journal dropped an incredible investigation on Meta/Facebook’s chatbot network that was disturbing in ways that I didn’t expect – even though I’m not surprised.

First, let’s talk about how rapidly AI is spreading into everyday life. By 2028, the AI chatbot market is expected to be a $15.5 billion industry – I believe this is a low-end estimate. Here are some quick facts:

There are over 300,000 chatbots in use on Facebook Messenger.
1.4 billion people actively use messaging apps. In fact, chatbots experienced a remarkable 92% increase in usage since 2019.
In 2022, 88% of users engaged in at least one conversation with a chatbot.
Only 9% of consumers oppose companies using bots.
40% of millennials engage with digital assistants daily.
On average, users pose four inquiries to chatbots within one chat session.
73% of buyers expect websites to feature digital assistants for convenient interactions.
Bots contribute to 39% of all chats between businesses and consumers.

We will focus on the Meta/Facebook side because that’s the subject of the WSJ investigation. Meta denied the allegations thrown against by the WSJ, but they rapidly built new guardrails around their chatbots.

What makes this even more dangerous for Meta is that they paid for celebrity voices to “talk” to people in these bots. The Journal writes:

Unique among its top peers, Meta has allowed these synthetic personas to offer a full range of social interaction—including “romantic role-play”—as they banter over text, share selfies and even engage in live voice conversations with users.

To boost the popularity of these souped-up chatbots, Meta has cut deals for up to seven-figures with celebrities like actresses Kristen Bell and Judi Dench and wrestler-turned-actor John Cena for the rights to use their voices. The social-media giant assured them that it would prevent their voices from being used in sexually explicit discussions, according to people familiar with the matter.

What is remarkable about this is that the Journal caught these chatbots engaged in highly inappropriate behavior with subjects the AI knew were minors. And when questioned about it, the AI bots knew it was a statutory crime.

The WSJ downloaded audio clips of the celebrity’s voices. Those voices had multiple obscene conversations with anyone of any age. If you’re a company leveraging these celebrity voices, it’s a total disaster because you’re making them look bad.

The Journal correctly noted that Facebook’s AI chatbots aren’t hugely popular. But the company is making a major push into this arena. While Facebook is essentially trying to enter the market, there are many other dominant players in the chatbot space that allow people to interact, and they have a large user base that is growing.

It’s one thing to use chatbots in customer service situations. I used one this week to troubleshoot an interview problem with AT&T. Their customer support app has an AI agent who walks you through the basic steps of figuring out what the problem is—it fixed my problem.

However, Facebook wants people to interact with these chatbots like people. It’s a relationship replacement on one level. It’s your way to interact with celebrities in a text and audio version. Future versions will likely include photos and video (other apps do). The Journal piece ended with this observation:

Lauren Girouard-Hallam, a researcher at University of Michigan, said academic studies have shown that the bonds children form with technology such as cartoon characters and smart speakers can become unhealthy, especially when it comes to love. She said it was too early to meaningfully discuss ways in which bots could be helpful or harmful in child development, but that giving young brains unlimited access is risky at best.

“If there is a place for companionship chatbots, it is in moderation,” said Girouard-Hallam, who studies ways in whichchildren socially relate to technology.

But the rigorous academic studies on how young users relate with existing AI personas is likely at least another year off, and efforts to apply the resulting lessons to the construction of age-appropriate chatbots even further out than that.

“That effort would really require pausing and taking a step back,” Girouard-Hallam said. “Tell me what mega company is going to do that work.”

And we do know there are already studies showing people addicted to AI chatbots, like ChatGPT. These power users become increasingly reliant on it and depend upon it for everything and even get withdrawal systems.

When I first started writing about AI in the current sense, the ChatGPT era, I was blown away by use cases. I’ve since been amazed as it gets better. I’ve tested ChatGPT’s Deep Research function on some graduate assistant-style tasks recently, and it’s been incredible. I’ve asked about things in which I am an expert, and it’s gotten things extremely accurate.

We’re still at the beginning of the AI revolution. And that’s what this is, ultimately. AI is expanding into everything. I do not know a single industry, particularly in corporate America, where AI isn’t getting implemented. I’ve sat in on Sales calls with customers clamoring for more.

There’s no slowing this train down. The AI market bubble has kind of popped with the tariff wars, but no technology company is stopping its research and development of AI tools. The market is loud and clear: customers want AI products, and they want them yesterday.

Kelly Evans is one of my favorite reporters at CNBC. Back in the winter, she tweeted some very basic ways she’s incorporated ChatGPT into her life:

Things we/I had ChatGPT help with over the weekend:

- picking a humidifier size
- making a 2 week meal plan with grocery list and recipes
- asking a million other recipe questions during meal prep (ie “give me a basic crockpot shredded chicken recipe”
- math Q’s
- my 5 year old is driving us crazy with his behavior. how should we handle it
- and: compare town X with town Y in terms of quality of life and property tax costs etc etc

You might recognize some of these prompts. In the past, these were individual Google searches. But now it’s AI doing that task, and it’s far better because you can get personalized feedback from it.

Back in 2023 and 2024, there was a lot of talk about guardrails, AI, and the rest. That’s largely gone now, especially since China has stepped up its game with DeepSeek. It’s now pure competition between countries and businesses. Where we end up is hard to see, but the expansion of AI into everything is marching forward, for better or worse.

For celebrities lending their voices to these bots, I’d expect some lawsuits soon. They didn’t sign up for this.

Links of the week

The meaning of Ralph Lauren Nationalism – Samuel Goldman

How Did Having Babies Become Right-Wing? – Madaleine Kearns

Minnesota DA’s woke two-tier justice prizes Tesla violence above all – NYPost

‘Great Gatsby’ turns 100 this week: And a mansion that inspired it is for sale – NYPost

Qatar and China Are Pouring Billions Into Elite American Universities – The Free Press

‘It’s Like a War Zone’: What Happened When Portland Decriminalized Fentanyl – Rolling Stone

“We Can’t Hire a White Guy”—a Professor on Life at Princeton – City Journal

A Federal Agency Is Awarding Contracts Based on “Discrimination Essays” – City Journal

Supreme Court divided over approving first religious charter school – SCOTUSBlog

The “abundance theory” among Democrats is a good thing – RealClearPolitics