OpenAI Gets Into Filmmaking & Should We Be Worried About Nukes in Space?

0:28Change is always happening. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, is Russia building a space nuke? What you need to know about the Cold War era frenzy gripping Washington this week. Then we just had another, oh geez, moment in AI that will change video forever. It's Friday, February 16th. Let's ride.

0:56We have a massive surprise announcement this morning. We interviewed someone yesterday that I think you all will be interested to hear from. Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, the Meta CEO and smoker of Meats himself. He sat down with us to talk about the Apple Vision Pro, his vision for AI, and even tipped us off on what he sees himself doing after Meta. That episode is dropping today at 9 a.m. Eastern. So after you finish this one, make sure you leave some time to listen to that one, please. How do you think the interview went? I think it went pretty well. I mean, he thinks about this stuff pretty deeply.

1:32He's literally a software engineer who built something in his dorm room, and it happened to be super popular, and he learned enough along the way. He was a smart enough guy to see where the industry was going and turned it into a trillion-dollar company. So, you know, a lot of people think he may come off as robotic, but he really warmed himself up to us, you know, over the course of the interview and got really animated, especially when talking about the early days of Facebook. Yeah, early days of Facebook. We talked about his leadership style, how that's involved. That was something I'd never heard him share before.

2:04Also, I just love that he's a man who's very passionate about his hobbies. I mean, it's kind of an inside joke for everyone that he loves smoking meats. He loves doing MMA. And we talked to him about that. So we got to see kind of that more personal, passionate side. All in all, it was super fun. And I really hope that you guys take the time to check it out. Before we jump into our show, let's hear a quick word from our sponsor, Veem. Not going to lie, Veem, you are one lucky son of a gun because you are getting the Zuck boost today. Wait, how are they getting the Zuck boost? Well, I think that people who listen to that episode will stop by and listen to this episode too.

2:39And also even the past months of episode as well. I see. Even better, lots of people getting the chance to hear how Veeam can protect your data and help you recover it too if something goes wrong. I wonder if Mark has his data security all figured out. I'm going to have to say yes on that one. He's probably got it covered. All right. All right. Whether you're new to the pod or have been here for a while, head to Veeam.com today to learn more. That's V-E-E-A-M.com. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglyss. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks.

3:17And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EPCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EPCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

3:46Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ebclus.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Yesterday was another wild day online that pushed us further into the AI twilight zone. OpenAI dropped a text-to-video platform that, frankly, is scary good. To show off the capabilities of its new program called Sora, Sam Altman took to X and asked people to reply with captions for videos they'd like to see, then started tweeting them out.

4:25Neil, it was surreal. These videos are hyper-realistic. like all the weird distortion and warping we come to expect from AI generated videos, mostly just gone. And these are not simple videos either. One prompt read, a bicycle race on ocean with different animals as athletes riding the bicycles with drone camera view, and it absolutely nailed it. All I could think about while watching these videos flow through was if Pandora's box wasn't open already when it comes to online misinformation, information sora turned it over and shook it until all the contents came out sora is still in a closed beta so academics and researchers can red team it and look for ways it can be misused but it's here neil it's here and it's once again the best in class i mean text to video has been around for only 18 months there are other companies doing it meta google some startups called one one is called runway but once again open ai they release chat gpt they have doll e3 those are text and image generation ones.

5:27This is their first text of video, and they just outclassed the competition. This is miles away better than anything else that's on the market. And it's only 18 months after the first one dropped. Again, the thing with AI is we're all commenting on how scary good it is. And this is just the first iteration. So yes, there's a long way to go here, but the first V1 is very, very good. Very, very impressive. Like all this technology, it's a double-edged sword. There's some people who pointed out that it could help speed up the work of movie makers. It could replace less experienced digital artists almost entirely, but it also is pretty much right out of the box, a quick and inexpensive way to make disinformation, misinformation online.

6:12It's already like the line between what is real and what is fake is getting blurrier and blurrier every day. And I mean, I encourage you guys to go check out these videos because truly they are photorealistic in every sense of the word. Yeah, I mean, Pixar in Monsters, Inc. worked four months to get the hair on Sully's fur looking realistic, and Sora does that in an instant. So you can see how it's definitely spooking people in the cinema movie industry. But I think the first use case for this, because they can only be a minute long, will be social media. So I think as soon as they release this to the public, and we don't know when they will, because you can tell they know that this is very dangerous and they're just, you know, releasing it to a very small amount of people right now.

6:55It'll probably flood your social media feeds. But the line between what is real and what is AI generated, I think, is becoming even blurrier. We put out a teaser for the Zuck interview on social media last night and a non-insignificant amount of people replied to me and replied to that tweet saying, is this AI generated? And they were completely serious. Yeah. Because they couldn't believe we interviewed Zuck. I hope they are a little tug and treat. But yeah, some people were genuinely, because I mean, the entire feed was flooded with AI generated videos. So we kind of circled back after and said, maybe that wasn't the best time to drop this trailer.

7:30But yeah, very interesting. The final thing is, I thought it was cool how this program has knowledge of film techniques. Like if you tell it, I want a steadicam shot or I want a drone follow, it also understands film language like that. So I do think that there will be a credible use case for filmmakers in the future as well. Look out, Christopher Nolan. Yeah. Moving on. It felt like we were living in the 1950s this week because there was a total freakout in D.C. over Russia's apparent pursuit of a nuclear weapon. But this one was in space. It all started on Tuesday when House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner urged President Biden to declassify information about a serious national security threat.

8:10But he didn't elaborate and everyone was thinking, like, what the heck is he referring to? Toby was convinced it was aliens. But White House officials confirmed yesterday that this threat was a Russian anti-satellite capability that it's developing, but doesn't present an active risk to American safety. Reading between the lines, experts said this is a nuclear space-based weapon that is intended to target America's vast network of satellites. Satellites orbiting the Earth are crucial to our military and our commerce. So taking them out would have enormous consequences, crippling telecommunications, GPS, Howard Stern and our economy more generally.

8:46And that's about all we know for now, though speculation is rampant about what kind of anti-satellite weapon Russia is building. What we do know is that space is the next frontier in the struggle for global, or I should say universal, domination. I still think it could be aliens, by the way. But yeah, we aren't sure what kind of weapon this is. When you hear nuke in space, the first thing your mind thinks of is the mushroom clouds and the big explosions. Although, I guess if it's in space, there is no real fire. But a lot of people are suspecting that it's actually carrying some sort of it's like a nuclear powered satellite carrying electronic weapons that would help disable the satellite network.

9:24And it's really thrown a wrinkle into how the U.S. thinks about space, especially when it comes to their space satellites. The old way was we would launch a big satellite every two years or so. We'd send it into deep orbit, geosynchronous orbit, which is much further away from space and low Earth orbit. But now it's kind of falling in the footsteps of the SpaceX blueprint, which is let's do let's blanket the Earth with cheaper lower orbit satellites. And that is a much harder to take down or target versus these big behemoth ones that we've relied on in the past. Yeah. And the military and NASA is contracting with a bunch of startups and rocket companies to kind of blanket the Earth with satellites.

10:05And one wrinkle that I thought was super interesting is we are trying to build up our capabilities of rapid deployment of satellites. So say Russia knocks out a bunch of our satellite systems. The global economy goes in free fall. Stock market plunges. We can't communicate with each other. They want to be able to get satellites back up in space as fast as possible. So they've contracted with a bunch of startups that are working in this rapid deployment space. There's one called Firefly that received an order from the military and then put a satellite up in space 27 hours after receiving that order.

10:39The earlier record was 21 days. So this rapid deployment, being able to get satellites to replenish in the event of Russia jamming them is is a burgeoning industry. Yeah. I mean, you can't overstate SpaceX's role in all this, too. the new kind of test satellites that the military launched this week was launched by a Falcon 9. They also are kind of copying Starlink's strategy of blanketing low Earth with satellites. So, again, SpaceX is—the industry kind of goes as SpaceX goes. Even though now the military and the government is getting involved, they still rely heavily on Elon and SpaceX. Elon has so much power.

11:17It's crazy. All right. Besides Russia's space nuclear weapons, immigration and how to secure the southern border has been at the forefront of debates in Washington. And at the peak of the commotion last week, a report dropped showing just how much immigration contributes to the U.S. economy. According to the Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the surge in immigration will add$7 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next decade by increasing the labor force and demand. There's going to be 5.2 million more people than expected in the American labor force in 2033, mostly from the influx of foreign nationals.

11:51And all of the taxes that come with this economic growth will be helpful to America's deficit, lifting government revenues by about one trillion dollars more than otherwise. This report echoes what Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on 60 Minutes earlier this month, which is that the U.S. economy has benefited from immigration and that one of the main reasons the labor market was so strong last year was immigration returning to pre-COVID levels. So even as the border fight drags on, there are plenty of ideas about how to fix a broken system. One thing that any solution should acknowledge is that immigration is massively beneficial to the U.S.

12:26economy. Yeah, this report put into perspective that the main benefit of the influx of immigrants is a much bigger, faster-growing economy. Extra workers pay more taxes, generates more economic activity that also yields tax revenue. But it is more nuanced than just more workers equals better economy, because this report paints a picture of a much larger economy. But if you over over flood the labor market with lower skilled workers, then it could drive wages down, which, again, maybe not good for the economy as a whole. So it is more nuanced than just like bigger is automatically better. But the big takeaways is that it does lead to a bigger economy.

13:06The CBO in the short term did say that the new influx of migrants, which are coming from poor Latin American economies, are going to put modest downward pressure on wages over the short term. In the long term, it shouldn't be a big deal. But certainly, that is a lot of anxiety that people have about immigration, that they're going to drive down wages in certain sectors. And the CBO kind of nodded to that and said, yeah, that might happen in a modest amount, at least for the next few years. But I just want to emphasize how important it is to have immigration for labor shortages, because during COVID, remember, there were all these labor shortages.

13:44Restaurants couldn't find workers. Hospitality companies couldn't find workers. The reason was that because we locked up the border for COVID and prices went up. That was a big reason why inflation skyrocketed. There just weren't enough workers. So to be able to replenish your labor force, especially as your population gets older and people retire, you need to have new workers. We're not having that many babies anymore. So America, for its entire history, has relied on immigration for this. And I think this report spells out just how important it is to keep up that influx and that welcoming arm to people because the economy depends on it.

14:19Yeah. I mean, all you have to do is look at other high-earning nations like China and Japan who are not doing well. they do not have a sizable immigrant population, their population is aging and it's putting a ton of pressure on their economy. So you literally just have to look east and you see what happens if you don't have kind of this young workforce entering the country. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we have quite literally the wildest scam ever to tell you about right after this.

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15:15Race the runners! Race the sails! Race the sails! Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Before we get to that scam, though, it's time for a little Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week action. where we bring you one stock that you'd be proud to take home to your parents and one stock that forgot flowers on Valentine's Day.

15:59As always, we are just humble podcasters, not financial advisors. So please do not take any of this as financial advice. Neil, I can't believe it, but you beat me in the fitted sheet folding contest this morning. So you're up first. What is our stock of the week? That is right. And before I reveal my stock of the week, I just have to ask everyone, how's your burger? Shake Shack is our pick after the company's stock popped 26 % yesterday for its best day ever. While other restaurants are experiencing slowdowns in foot traffic, Shake Shack is seeing lines out the door. Traffic at the burger chain jumped 15 % in October and 24 % in December, compared to a 1.6 % decline in the overall fast food industry.

16:39What is working? Well, new launches like spicy burgers and crinkle cut fries went over very well with customers, and so did limited-time promotions. like Trolls-themed shakes. Next year, Shake Shack is hoping to continue the momentum by opening 80 new stores, testing out combo meals, and even getting into dessert. I mean, they got shakes already a little bit, but I am a huge Shake Shack fan. I actually have tried their, they called it their new spicy menu, which is sweet and spicy. I've had their Korean-style fried chicken sandwich. I've had their Korean barbecue burger. And they do, it is more on the sweet side than the spicy side, by the way.

17:17How much of the foot traffic did you contribute yourself? I have contributed a fair amount, I am loathe to say. It is interesting, though, because this stock has absolutely been ripping 30 % year-to-date and more than 130 % dating back to the beginning of last year. It's also not just Shake Shack that investors are kind of piling into. They've also shown love to Kava and Wingstop. They're both up 20 % year-to-date. So I do think we're seeing this resurgence of consumers going out, doing what I'm doing, and walking into these fast casual places and ordering food. Yeah, but overall, Shake Shack stock is only up 3 % from its peak in 2015.

17:51It's been a long comeback. Meanwhile, the S &P is up 135%. So yes, it's been ripping recently, but this stock has not been exactly a huge winner over the past decade. All I'm saying is that the jump in stock corresponds to me moving to New York. So you're welcome, Shake Shack. Let's move on to my dog of the week, which is the whole doggone country of Japan. Its GDP shrank at an annualized pace of 0.4 % in the last quarter of 2023. And just like that, it's in a recession and it lost its position as the world's third largest economy to Germany. It was an unexpected drop in domestic consumption that ended up causing the weak economic numbers.

18:31And they were weak. Economists expected 1.4 % growth and instead got another quarter of contraction, which, combined with the previous quarter, was enough to satisfy the typically agreed-upon definition of a recession. Neil, it's kind of the same old story we've been talking about here in the U.S. Consumers are battling higher prices for food, fuel, and other goods. But the difference is that people just aren't spending enough for the economy to grow. Yeah, Japan's been stagnating for the past 30 years. It came out of World War II, a huge economic miracle, powered through the 70s and 80s, had these vaunted corporations.

19:06But over the past few decades, you're seeing a population get older, just like we talked about. They don't have an influx of immigrants to replenish the labor force. So, Japan is just kind of in this stagnating position where it's getting leapfrogged by other growing economies. And not that Germany is growing so fast, but in the next few years, it's expected to be passed by India, which is growing at 7%. So, you have this period of malaise and stagnation over there. One of the big issues is that Japan's economy imports 94 % of its energy requirements, 63 % of its food. So whenever the yen kind of falls and becomes weaker compared to the dollar, everything just becomes more expensive and just weighs on prices as well.

19:45So when you're relying on 94 % of your energy consumption requirements from outside of the mainland, then it is very hard when energy prices start to go up. But in further evidence that the economy is not the stock market, the Nikkei, Japan's index, is at a 34-year high. So, investors are bullish, at least on the corporations there. So, we'll see what happens. But do you know who No. 5 is on the economy standings? I mean, I would have thought. After Germany and Japan? I would have thought India, but that makes me feel like it's not. Well, California. Oh, my gosh. That's a fake one. Okay. Okay.

20:20Yesterday, a woman named Charlotte Cowles wrote a detailed piece in the cut about how she was scammed out of$50 ,000. But there's a catch. She is a personal finance columnist. Cowles explained how she gave a shoebox full of her cash to someone posing as an undercover CIA agent in an SUV parked outside of her house. and all of the steps it took to get there to show how anyone, even someone whose job it is to write about taking care of your finances, could get bamboozled out of their money. This article went so viral to the point where FTC Chair Lena Kahn chimed in, emphasizing that fraudsters posing as the government are highly common and that Americans lost$2.7 billion to impersonator scams last year.

21:04The reactions to this piece were varied from, she's a moron, I would never fall for this, too. I can totally see how someone can be psychologically manipulated by inducing panic, fear, and isolation. Kals' point ultimately was that if she, a normal, smart person who writes about scams, ended up giving away$50 ,000 in a shoebox to someone she doesn't know, then you could too. I cannot stress to you guys how detailed and elaborate this scam was. I'll try to quickly run through the details. It started with a call from about unauthorized purchases on her Amazon account. That quickly became an identity theft case where she got connected to the FTC.

21:41Remember, all these are going to be in quotation marks, which then escalated to having a warrant out for arrest in connection to drug smuggling and money laundering in two states. And she ended up talking with what she thought was a CIA agent. It all led her to having to trust nobody, not even tell her husband what is going on. Again, we spoke to that isolation. And then also that they needed to freeze her assets, which involved her going to the bank, withdrawing$50 ,000 in cash and handing that cash over to someone in an SUV. It was crazy. They had her social security number. They knew where she lived.

22:13They knew that she had a son. I see both sides of it. Once that fear grips you, it's very hard to think rationally. Yeah. I mean, they break you down. And the whole time she had this inner monologue of like, something's up, something's sketchy. Why, why is this happening to me? But just the, the, the way they manipulate you and instill fear. And I think a big thing of this is the escalation. It started with Amazon. Then it gets handed off to the FTC. It gets handed off to the CIA. It gets from innocuous, check your account because there might have been unauthorized purchases, to there was a body found in a car with your name on it in New Mexico.

22:54And then it only escalates from there. And I think you just get super scared, super isolated to the point where you don't think rationally. And her point was saying like, this can happen to anyone. And she pointed out stories from a bunch of her friends and other people who seemed smart, seemed with it, and were also scammed out of their money. Yeah, it's absolutely easy to point the finger at this person and say, well, I would not have fallen for that. I'm not a boomer. I'm not dumb. But that's just statistically untrue. Younger adults, Gen Z millennials, are 34 % more likely to report losing money to fraud compared to those over 60.

23:29And that's coming from the FDC. So, again, this is very much a thing that even though you are part of the online generation, you spend a lot of your time online, you are still vulnerable to these scams. Or maybe even more vulnerable. Yeah, absolutely. The FTC data shows that. And then we haven't even mentioned AI. There was no AI involved in this case. So this next generation of scams, just be on the lookout, people. All right, Neil, last night we stayed up late by our standards all the way to 8 p.m. to see if Kaitlin Clark would break the all-time NCAA basketball scoring record. And our sleep schedules, thank you, Kaitlin, because she made us wait all of 10 minutes before doing it.

24:08She needed eight points to pass Kelsey Plum for number one and scored the first eight points of the game for Iowa, capping it off with a three from the logo, which was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen. Neil, what else is there to say about Clark? She's the face of college basketball right now, men or women, and is actually generating a sizable amount of economic activity wherever she goes. Ticket prices for her game were around the most expensive ever for a women's basketball game, pro or college, according to TickPick. Iowa sold out every single home game before the season even started, and her mere presence in the sport helped drive average resale ticket prices to see regular season women's college basketball up 75 % from a year ago.

24:49It's Clark's world. We're just living in it. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what we saw with Taylor Swift in the Ares tour over the summer. I'd be surprised if Jerome Powell doesn't mention Caitlin Clark in the next economic report because wherever she goes, she generates a huge buzz. People drive in from all over to see her games. It generates so much revenue as well. Look at just Mackey Arena, Purdue, West Lafayette, Indiana. When Iowa came to town, they earned$106 ,000 in ticket sales. Normally, that's$22 ,000. They generated$36 ,000 in concessions. Normally, that's$11 ,000. So just like Taylor Swift, whenever she would go to another city, hotels would book up, restaurants would book up, people would spend a ton of money.