AI Copyrights, Girl Math, and Blindsides

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0:48Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. It's a new year, and we are opening up our listener mailbag. We've gotten lots of great questions since our last mail episode, And today we're going to dig into and answer as many as we can. Just a quick note, some of these have been edited for clarity, brevity, and sanity. You ready, Scott? Yeah, except for the sanity part, but yeah, I'm in. Well, that's okay. I think they're fully aware of that situation. Okay, Scott, let's kick off with a question that came in via email from an anonymous listener.

1:22I'll read it. Hi, Karen. Scott, I work on artificial intelligence as a government civilian at the U.S. Department of Defense. I was recruited here from Silicon Valley a few years ago, and it's been an honor of my life to do this work. I found it hard to convince my former Silicon Valley colleagues, software engineers, data scientists, etc., to work in government. It's perplexing to me as they seem to have no problem voicing their critiques of the USG on X. Why not be part of the solution? How do you think we can mend this geographic and cultural divide so we have more top technical talent working to better our country and national security instead of profiting off it?

1:55Love the show. Thank you. Anonymous. You go first, Kara. I will. My ex-wife became the CTO of America. That was a big deal. She left a lucrative job, lucrative jobs at Google. And she felt it was her need to service, to be in service of this country. It was really hard to recruit people. And a lot of people I know, great technologists have moved to the government and not just our federal government, but state governments, et cetera. They lose money. There's no question. One of the things, though, that they all complain about is how the government treats them like the help desk. I think this is a complaint that Megan had and many others is that they haven't integrated the importance of tech into government.

2:38And so it's not as easy to work. That said, a lot of them really love the sense of mission and that you're doing something and you can do something that changes the lives of a lot of people in a good way, you know, rather than just shoving out a dating service on Facebook or whatever the heck you're doing. And so there is a sense of mission, and I think a lot more young people do have that, but there's no question there's been a bleeding of our top technologists away from government and towards money and tech and wherever it happens to be. Scott? Some of it's cultural. In America, we worship private business people and athletes.

3:13In Israel, military leaders in the UK, actual government and sirs and knights and lords. So some of it is cultural to be suspicious of a big government. But I think it's gotten to a point where people have to realize government is us. And that geopolitically, I believe we've never been stronger relative to our competitors, but we're kind of rotting from the inside out. So what to do about it? One, stop shitposting the government. Our most blessed cohort, specifically males born in the U.S. in the 70s and 80s who became multi-multi-billionaires all of a sudden decide once they have leveraged U.S.

3:51infrastructure and investment and our education system and our rule of law, then go on to start their second career shitposting government. I think that is obnoxious and doesn't in any way nod to how blessed they are. Two, our actual elected leaders need to stop shitposting each other and shitposting America. It makes no sense that we elect people to government who want to tear it down. That's obviously a, you know, that's cells turning on themselves. And that's the definition of cancer. And most specifically, I'm a big advocate and have been spending some time and some money on this. I believe we need national service.

4:25I think young Americans would be well served to serve their country in a military capacity, a nonprofit capacity, a health capacity, to realize that for as fucked up as we are, we're the least fucked up place in the world. And there's a lot of - Oh, that's an ad. Join the military. It's the least fucked up place in the world. Well, we need young people to meet other people from other income, racial, sexual orientation backgrounds, realize they're a lot more like you than you think, go into different parts of the nation, see what a wonderful nation it is, and feel - Join the army, Scott. You and I, it'd be like Private Benjamin.

4:57I regret not having served. I almost went to Annapolis, and I think it's one of the—I think I would have been a better man and more mature at a lot earlier age. Yeah, it is my regret. I couldn't go because I was gay, but I regret it. I don't have that. I couldn't go because I was heterosexual. I went to sorority rush week at UCLA, and I'm like, I'm going here. So we both went—we both didn't join the Army because of our sexual orientation. Where do you think you would have made it in the military and me? Oh, I would have been kicked out. I would have been kicked out. I would have been an admiral.

5:26Don't you think I would have been an admiral at this point? They would have caught me. I would have failed my birthstroke test. I would have been kicked out. Yeah. Let's talk about me now for once. Admiral, don't you think? Admiral Swisher. I think you would have been killed by your own troops. But that's just me.

5:40Admiral Swisher. I would have had you drawn and quartered is what I would. Yeah. What happened? What happened to Admiral Swisher? Let's just call it friendly fire. Let's just call it friendly fire. No, you're wrong. The troops would have been with the lesbian. You're always back a lesbian in battle. That's my feeling. Anyway. The militia Etheridge. Yeah, militia Etheridge. I'm telling you, I would have had you in irons, right? In irons. No, but back to the actual question. I think we need more civics classes. I think it's important to talk openly and honestly about our feelings as a country. Yep.

6:14But we're raising a generation of people that don't like America. And we need to figure out ways to be honest about our history. but at the same time celebrate not only our victories, but that victory was in the agency of each other. That Republicans and Democrats have worked together, fought wars together. We push back on fascism. We are in striking distance of being the first truly multicultural democracy of this prosperity. No one's pulled this off before. Yes. Love it or leave it. That's what Scott said. And it comes back to what this individual is saying. We need to start having more respect for our government and our leaders that decide to serve.

6:54You got to be in it. Come and join. Come and join. You could like you don't need seven billion if you have six. Anyway, next question. This one comes from voicemail via Alyssa. Let's listen. Hi, Kara and Scott. My name is Alyssa. Our 18 year old daughter recently introduced us to this concept of girl math. It's a concept that has gone kind of viral lately, especially on TikTok. And on the surface, it's meant to be like a funny way to justify impulse purchases. And one way it does this is by articulating the value of a thing beyond basic kind of dollars and cents language. So on one hand, I really like how girl math legitimizes currencies like time and happiness.

7:39But on the other hand, calling it girl math seems to simultaneously devalue these important currencies. So Scott and Kara, what do you think about girl math? I don't know about it. I don't quite know what it means. Like, you know, I think a lot of people do girl this, girl that, and I don't mind it if it's young women doing it, I guess. It's, sometimes it's made to diminish it by calling it, you know, girl. I never liked girl boss, any of that stuff. But I don't know enough about it. But I do think that I like people expressing these kind of creativities on these online things. And there is a value of anything behind basic dollars and cents.

8:18If it's about just shopping, I'd be like, okay, whatever. This one is probably just more fun than anything else. Real math girls should do for sure. And there's a lot of serious attempts to do that, but I don't mind. It sounds like something that's somewhat silly, but what do you think, Scott? Yeah, I don't think this is profound. Essentially, girl math is kind of ignoring responsibilities momentarily. And it does, there's some sexism and some stereotypes here that probably aren't successful. I think girl math is getting out of the shower in time to make your dinner. There's sort of, they call it girl math, like figuring out a way to justify an impulse purchase, right?

8:59You do girl math. I think it's fairly harmless. The only place I take this and use this as an excuse to be critical, I do think buy now, pay later. which kind of I think is used sometimes in girl math jokes or memes, where essentially an industry has convinced young people that they're being innovators, and it's not as irresponsible to buy on their credit when it's just credit. And I think it's resulted in a lot of people getting in too deep. Part of conspicuous purchases, understanding, I let my 13-year-old spend$300 on an AI bot to buy sneakers. And I knew at the time it was probably a mistake, But I'm like, he's got to learn these mistakes.

9:39He's got to figure out that he spends too much money. He doesn't have it for something he wants the next week. And I think you just got to let kind of kids be kids around this type of stuff. But I don't see it as that harmful. I think it's kind of, I don't know. I don't know. What's boy math? I don't even want to know. I don't answer that. Boy math is how 5 '10 measures six feet. That's boy math. Oh, nice. Well done. Okay. I thought you were going to go somewhere else with that. All right, Scott. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more listener questions.

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11:31Okay, Scott, we're back. The next question comes via email from a listener named Hannah. Let me read it. Hi, Karen, Scott. I remember a while back, Scott talking favorably about the way Adidas handled the Kanye West situation after listening to the Daily episode about the relationship between the company and the hip hop star. I'm curious if there are any new thoughts on how Adidas handled them or how the company should approach these situations. Thanks, Hannah. For those who don't know, not as well as you think during the course of it. It was an investigation by Megan Toohey, who's a terrific reporter who did the Harvey Weinstein investigation.

12:04Can you summarize it, Cara, in terms of what came out? They went along with him for quite a while. They enabled him and allowed him to misbehave and say terrible things to employees, etc., etc., etc. What one would suppose they did in order to make a fortune? There's just no getting around it. in a capitalist society, people with money or create economic value for other people live by a different set of standards. It's just, I've seen, I've been on boards where we've put up with total bullshit. I've put up with total bullshit in my companies because someone's ringing the register. I've worked with people who are not kind, can be abusive to other employees, but they're just so fucking important.

12:41You find reasons to wallpaper over it. I'm not immune from it. It's just, the reason why you have decent governance and hopefully leaders is occasionally they can say, we know the right thing to do here. It may be painful. We're going to do it. But also, I want to acknowledge in a small company, it's even worse than a small company. I've had people who are just awful, awful. And they were so important to the small company. I'm like, well, we can be virtuous and fire them. And then there's a decent chance I'm going to have to fire 60 people in three months. These are tough calls. Yeah. But in this case, he was anti-Semitic in front of employees.

13:18He was, you know, crazy. But that's what they said, right? They're like, oh, he's crazy. Yes. I don't think it was limited to just, ain't he crazy? Kind of like, I would like a fish bagel. I don't know, whatever he asked for, like anti-Semitic things, abuse, more than your average situation. Playing porn in front of employees at meetings and stuff like that. Yeah, look, there's just no getting around it. When you create billions of dollars in shareholder value, you can, if someone can manage you, or you put rockets into space, you get to live by a different set of standards. And it's upsetting.

13:59Wow, that's some standard. The question is, you know, how do you institutionalize and have enough people in the company that at some point people do the right thing? And what I've generally found, generally is that companies get, like America, corporations which have similar governance to America, they get it wrong all the time in the short run, but the arc of justice does bend towards justice, that eventually these people eat a cold lunch. I guess. After they made their billions. I think Adidas handled it incredibly badly and then got kudos for doing what was like a ridiculously obvious thing.

14:36I think that's a little unfair. I think that a lot of companies would have attempted to gloss over the whole thing. He was making so much money for them. Perhaps. He got pretty public with his anti-Semitism. They were fine with all the other public behaviors. But anyway, I don't feel like you should be playing porn at meetings. Is that what it's called? Is that what I'm doing on weekends? I'm playing porn? No, no, no. Like putting it on and watching it. Depends what kind of porn. He's very creative, Scott. Okay. All right. Don't do it. Don't do it. That'll be the end of our relationship. Okay, Scott, let's get to a question.

15:11I'm very curious to hear your answer, too. It comes in via voicemail. Let's listen. Hi, Karen. Scott, my name is Matt. I'm a professor down in Florida. I have a question about AI, specifically Prof. G's AI. I was struck by how Scott has been vocal about the need for AI models to recognize and compensate the authors from whom their large language model is drawing. I went to the prof GAI and I asked, are you paying Kara Swisher for her contributions to this LLM? This was the response I got. No, I'm not paying Kara Swisher for her contributions to this LLM. She's a great friend and colleague, and we have both a great dynamic on our podcast, Pivot.

15:52We both bring different perspectives and experience to the table, which makes for an engaging and informative show. I believe in compensating people fairly for their work, but in this case, it's more of a partnership where we both benefit from the exposure and opportunities it brings. So I'm wondering, Kara, how do you feel about this arrangement? And Professor Galloway, how do you feel about it? Thanks so much. Wow. Matt, thanks for alerting me to this. I already texted my lawyer. I'm going to have to sue Scott for copyright infringement, obviously. As per usual, Scott is drafting off of my work, and he will have to be taken to court in probably the greatest court battle of all time.

16:30I'm going to do a thermonuclear lawsuit a la Elon for this. I just e-filed it right now. I think he should pay me. I think everyone should be paid for this stuff. In this case, I don't even think he asked me, but whatever. I'm not going to sue him, but I think people, there are going to be lots of lawsuits around copyright and should be. Scott? So what the professor's referring to is the LLMs, The ProfG.ai crawled. We fed into it all of my newsletters, of which I own the IP, but we also fed in the transcripts from the podcast, which technically Vox and therefore Kara have some license to the IP on.

17:10Yes. The reality is it won't be me, the user, end user paying. The way it would work is that the LLM, or in this case, OpenAI, would pay a broader licensing fee to an organization that represents artists, including Cara and everyone else that does podcasts. And in exchange for their consent, give them a royalty, similar to the way Madonna can't track every time someone plays a song on a radio station. So she's part of a larger rights group that assesses, all right, Madonna songs were played 73 million times. We charge every radio station an omnibus licensing agreement. Here, Madonna, here's your$7.3 million a year or whatever she gets.

17:57That's how it will effectively play out, I believe, is that I believe everyone has rights. Yeah, like what's the recording industry thing that does that? That's exactly right. I don't know what the term is, but, you know, Flock of Seagulls probably gets$11 ,000 a year. Taylor Swift probably gets$11 million a year or more than that. And they track who's using what. And if you're a radio station, you buy the rights to all of this music so you can play it. I think that's what needs. Or individual deals like AP did with ChatGPT, stuff like that. I think this is where this is all headed is one big licensing agreement across.

18:33Maybe. I think you cannot crawl people's feet without, I mean, Barry Diller, an interview with me, talked about lawsuits. There's going to be lawsuits. And again, I'll take money from Scott a different way. I'll be staying at his apartment next week. I have a trip to New York. Well, like I said, Kara, one of the most rewarding things about the last few years for me is the opportunity to rejuvenate kind of a flagging career of a thoughtful yet waning Kara Swisher. I am literally, I am the Tina Fey to your Alec Baldwin. Can I just say, I still got it. That's all I have to say. There we go. Anyway, I will be suing you and you'll be hearing from my lawyers.

19:05Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back with some more questions and to give our New Year's resolutions.

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20:57okay scott we're back and moving on to our latest question this one is about our favorite thing to talk about us let's listen hi scott and cara my name is justin i'm a 41 year old physical therapist i fell in love with scott on his first time on real time with bill maher and the only thing better than scott is scott and cara together uh scott helped me see a blind side uh in my own work and personal life, basically doing a market assessment every three to five years. I did that and moved across the country, started a new job, and doubled my salary in the past two years. I went from working with children with disabilities to veterans with disabilities, both aligned with just who I am as a person.

21:46My question to you is, what blind side have you discovered? Has your relationship helped you identify a blind side that the other person has? And then what did you do about it? I think you guys are fantastic and you are part of my car ride two days a week, every week. I thank you so much for your contribution. You guys have a great day. Much love, Scott and Carol. Thank you. Well, that's really nice. Gosh, he loves us. Jesus, yeah. Can that guy be my friend? Can that guy adopt me? I want to note, I was taping my CNN show, and a guy literally ran after me in the lobby to make me tape something for Scott, thanking him for his help being a man, which was interesting.

22:32And you sent it to me. I made my day. Thank you. It was very moving, I thought it was. And then I, of course, took his temperature and said, are you okay? Right. Oh, God. Scott, you go first. Blindside. It's your blindside. You know, I've tried to be more cognizant of what, quite frankly, I'm a selfish person and to more to try and see things through the lens of how it impacts other people and don't immediately just instinctively think about me all the time. I've tried to become less sensitive to other people's strangers criticisms and not in and also just be if you think of yourself as a thought leader and you want to have a positive impact on the world recognize that if you say something that has meaning it doesn't have meaning unless quite frankly it offends and angers some people and you never want to diminish people you don't want to say things just to offend people but saying the world was round or supporting integration were really offensive things at the time they were initially brought up.

23:31So I've tried to become more fearless, if you will. You are fearless. And I'm at a point in my life where I spent the first 50 years of my life just focusing on how I can get more money. And I've now recognized that now that I have money, how important it is to figure out a way to get more money in other people's hands. And I wish I'd come to that realization earlier. Interesting. Yeah. And just be a little bit, show a little bit more grace, you know, just getting older. What are your thoughts, Tara? I'm still going with 50, but okay. There you go. 49 right now. Just turned 49. I'm laughing right now, but I have so much Botox in my face.