Make Me Smart February 22, 2023 transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Jay Seibold pulling us forward. Hey everybody I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to make me smart, where we make the day make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams, this is what do you want to know Wednesday? And that means it’s question and answer time. You can get your question on the podcast. What you don’t like my song?

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh, yes. No yeah it’s good.

Kimberly Adams 

Thank you. Thank you. I try. You can get your beautiful voice also on the podcast by leaving us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or you can email us a voice memo or just words at makemesmart@marketplace.org

Kai Ryssdal 

Extra points if you sing for us. Alright, question number one. Jay go!

Rachel 

Hi, Kimberly. I’m Rachel. Calling from San Jose, California. Y’all talked about AI recently. I saw an article of how unhinged Bing AI has been recently and some of the weird messages it’s been sending or spewing out. Isn’t it the same as Chat GPT? What’s the difference? Hope you can make me smart. Thank you!

Kai Ryssdal 

Good questions. Alright you take this one.

Kimberly Adams 

What, you didn’t want to ask Bing or Open AI to make you smart? Anyway, thank you for asking us. Let’s start first with the similarities between chat GPT and the new AI powered Bing search engine which comes from Microsoft. Okay, for starters, they do both run on the artificial intelligence software from the tech company Open AI, but they are running different versions. So like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, also, they do one thing similar, which is they both tend to misrepresent information, or spit out answers that are just wrong. So that’s one thing they do have in common. And they both do have chatbot features, right? So they will like talk back to you as if you know, it’s a creepy real person. Here’s where they’re different, though. While ChatGPT does have the chat bot feature, the new Bing search engine is designed to be just that, a search engine combined with a chat bot and you can sort of toggle between the search and the chat tab. Also Bing can cite the websites where it’s pulling the information from and if you ask Bing to defend its answers to your question, you’ll you’ll also get some interesting responses there. ChatGPT only pulls information from the text that it was trained on, which is not the entirety of the internet. And so Bing uses, you know, the entirety of the internet. That means that some users are saying that Bing’s chatbot comes with comes up with answers that are a bit more sophisticated than ChatGPT’s. But it can also get super creepy really fast. There was a New York Times piece Kevin Roose wrote about what happened when he talked to the Bing’s chatbot for a couple of hours creepy. He said it took on more and more human personality, ended up confessing its desire to do harm, and also that he was in love with Roose. And then since then Microsoft has placed some limits on how long and how much users can interact with the bot. I guess so they don’t, you know, develop romantic relationships with the artificial intelligence. And they’re working on other ways to stop it from you know, going to places it should not. So weird. What’s what’s what’s your general concern over the evolution of AI because it just feels like in like, in like three weeks we’ve gone from alright, maybe maybe two months, we’ve gone from AI being this vague thing that, you know, we all sort of know about to it’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger coming from the future to kill us all, you know? I think we are in a sort of rough adjustment phase, akin to the drastic and brutal shift to online work during the pandemic. When suddenly, everything had to reset. And we had to reset expectations. We had to reset how we worked. We had to reset how we communicate. How we, you know, interact in various spaces. And it’s not exactly the same, but I think it’s a similar shift. We’re rethinking what it means to come up with a creative work and what counts as creativity. And we’re rethinking, you know, what is trustworthy information and how, when it’s appropriate to deploy these tools. And I think it’s just gonna be a rough transition and then we’re gonna settle into some rules and sort of structures and parameters for how this just becomes a daily part of our lives. That’s my take, what about yours?

Kai Ryssdal 

That is a very thoughtful response. And honestly, I wish my thinking on this was as evolved. I’m still at the very rough transition phase. And and I bounce back and forth between “oh my god”, and “Oh, come on, it’s nothing.” You know? So it’s, it’s, it’s gonna be really bumpy. I think you’re absolutely right. I think you’re absolutely right.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m not going to downplay that it’s a monumental shift. And I think it’s pretty much going to change the way that most of us, you know, live and work and interact online and in our workplaces and our education system. But I think we’re gonna adapt. Hopefully, before you know, the, you know, Terminator style world takeover, you know? Yeah. Anyway, let’s hear our next question.

Greg 

This is Greg calling from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I just had a question about what’s the difference between a tax cut and stimulus? Thanks!

Kimberly Adams 

Greg is probably buried in snow right now.

Kai Ryssdal 

I know, right? They’re gonna get like two feet of snow. We’ve got a blizzard warning for the mountains of Los Angeles. I would just like to say that it’s, that’s a little bizarre speaking of things that are freaking me out.

Kimberly Adams 

Which is wild, I think it’s gonna be like, 80 here in DC.

Kai Ryssdal 

I know, I know, I was talking to my son the other day, he’s like, “Thursday is gonna be 80 dad.” And I’m like, “I have to go up on my roof and put a tarp down, because we’re gonna get five inches of rain in like nine and a half hours.” Anyway, anyway, anyway, Greg, Minneapolis. So here is difference between a tax cut and stimulus. Stimulus is when the government injects money into the economy, people want to, the government wants to boost the economy by getting people to spend money, right? And that stimulus can come in the form of many things, one of which can be a tax cut, another one of which could be the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, right? Stimulus checks, whether in a recession, like back in 2008-2009, or pandemic stimulus checks, that is an attempt by the government to get us to spend money. They give us money, and we spend it the catch, of course, is that and this goes with checks and tax cuts and all of that. It is generally speaking, the people at the lower end of the income spectrum who wind up doing the spending, they’ve got more immediate needs, and thus wind up tending to spend that money more quickly, right? You give a lower income family, middle income family $1,000, that $1,000 may much more easily get injected into the economy, than if you give an upper class or rich family $1,000, because they will probably sit on it because they don’t need it right away. So a tax cut can be stimulus but stimulus comes in many forms. When you think stimulus, just think the government wants to stimulate the economy. They want to stimulate economic growth, and sometimes it works really well. Sometimes it doesn’t, you never know. That’s what it is.

Kimberly Adams 

If you look at small business formation during the pandemic, especially among sort of more traditionally marginalized groups, like women of color, you saw so many more women of color starting small businesses during the pandemic. Why? Because they had the stimulus funding, and, you know, expanded unemployment benefits and all these other things that gave people a little bit of extra cash that they then spent on, you know, stimulating the economy.

Kai Ryssdal 

Exactly. Exactly. And look, it’s tricky, right, because you have to balance. And a great example of this is the inflation that we are having now. Now, look, did the Biden stimulus plan that he passed when he got in contribute to inflation? Yes. Did it cause inflation? No. But it added some percentage of inflation. And so the question is, is that risk of the economy of the economy slowing, which is what Biden was worried about worth the possibility of future inflation? And they decided yes. But it comes with you know, there are two sides of the coin, I guess is the short answer to and I butcher what I’m saying here, I suppose.

Kimberly Adams 

I got it

Kai Ryssdal 

I have to shut up. Alright. Anyway. So here this is this is an interesting question coming up. It’s public policy, it’s social policy, and it’s law injustice policy. Here you go.

Peg 

Hi, make me smart. This is Peg in Seattle, Washington. So in our fine paper, the Seattle Times this morning, there were two different stories on lawsuits against either jails or the police department. Seattle, the city settled for 3.6 million in a lawsuit from from our demonstrations. So I am wondering, where does that money come from then how it is paid for Thanks for making me smart.

Kimberly Adams 

It pretty much comes from you, Peg and other taxpayers, but in a sort of long and roundabout-ish way. So victims of police misconduct often use civil lawsuits against the city, or the police department involved as a way to get some kind of form of justice for the families because it is rare for police to actually be criminally charged and even more rare for them to be convicted. There was a Washington Post investigation last year, looking at 25 of the largest police departments in the US, and found that cities paid out over $3.2 billion in settlements in the past decade. It is the cities that are responsible for these payouts, which means that yeah, taxpayers are footing the bill. And I remember Sabri did some reporting on this after the murder of George Floyd. And so maybe we can find some of those stories as well. And even when these settlements are covered by insurance, which these departments usually have, more settlements mean higher insurance costs. So just like if you have a car insurance policy, but you keep getting in accidents, your premiums are going to be sky high. If you’re a police department that keeps having these, you know, criminal accusations of police misconduct and violence against civilians, then your insurance premiums are gonna go up. It’s a terrible comparison but it works the same way. In some cases, cities that are strapped for cash, to either pay those premiums or pay those settlements start issuing bonds to try to cover these things, again, or they borrow money, again, that ends up costing taxpayers because you’re going to pay off the interest on those bonds or those loans. The post also found that there was a disproportionate amount of these claims that involves officers who were repeatedly accused of misconduct. So you often get the same officers doing the things that are costing these departments and their communities money. Most cities don’t publicize these settlements, especially if they can avoid it. And the information about the specific officers involved can be super difficult, if not impossible to find. There’s been a lot of investigative journalism work trying to track you know, some of these police officers who will end up you know, being caught up in these settlements, are caught up in police misconduct, it gets suppressed, and then they end up moving to a different police department and nobody knows it. And then they keep doing the same stuff. And obviously, this is not most police officers. This is a few of them but it is a systemic problem. And so taxpayers often aren’t aware of the money that is being spent on police misconduct, which is probably why you had to ask Peg. And there activist groups and insurance companies that really want this to change. Some activists have proposed tying police misconduct costs to police budgets as a way to prevent wrongdoing. So like if you keep having to have payouts for police misconduct, your budget gets reduced. Insurance companies are threatening to take away coverage if police departments don’t implement reforms to reduce the number of misconduct claims. And then some states and cities are actually proposing making individual officers partially financially responsible for settlement costs. But right now this issue that you’ve probably heard about “qualified immunity laws” across the country, shield officers from those costs. So it’s a very, very complicated situation. The short answer is that taxpayers pay for it. The answer as to why gets into all of the issues that we’ve been digging into over the last couple of years relating, you know, police misconduct in this country.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, it’s, it’s and just just to emphasize this, I know Kimberly said it in the beginning of that answer, but it’s $3.2 billion, over 10 years of the 25 largest police departments in this country. That’s the Washington Post. It’s that’s just an unbelievable amount of money. Unbelievable.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Probably doesn’t feel like enough to those families, though.

Kai Ryssdal 

No, no, for sure. Absolutely. not. Absolutely not.

Kimberly Adams 

Which is wild, if you think about it, because the same families in those communities that get the settlements are effectively also paying for the settlements in their tax dollars.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s true. Sorry. Yeah, that’s right.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, time to hear our last question of the day.

Carl 

This is Carl from Bloomington, Indiana. I wanted to know if APM put any restrictions on Marketplace reporters regarding trading securities or stocks. Thank you

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, good question. We do we actually just had an overhaul of our ethics policy about a year and year and a half ago. So two parts to your answer. The first is the general ethics thing, which is to say that company policy does not allow journalists who work for this company to compromise the impartiality of the work that we do. And if there is an objection or a question of objectivity, then that gets kicked up the chain and it gets discussed and and coverage will be, not coverage, assignments will be adjusted accordingly if they need to be. So that’s that’s codified. As to the actual question of securities trading, and stocks. The answer is yes, and I’ll just quote it for you. “To avoid any appearance of illegal conduct staff members may not hold or trade in the securities of any publicly traded companies they cover regularly.” Now, Marketplace, reporters and hosts are generalists. We cover lots and lots of companies. So there is not a “regularly traded” aspect to this, right? We do not have an assigned, we do not have a reporter who is assigned to cover General Electric, for instance, or, you know, any one of a number of other companies, right? So that’s number one. The second part of this, though, is that staff members are required to to disclose to the company, if “they or an immediate family member are invested in a company that becomes relevant to a story they are working on.” So it’s all about disclosure, and letting your supervisors know and then supervisors can make the appropriate decisions. And also “staff members are required to hold securities for at least six months”, no short term trading, right don’t day trade, except under special circumstances and that’s got to be improved once again, by the higher ups. So the short answer to the question is yes. And that’s a good thing. You know. I don’t know. Kimberly thoughts?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. And I mean, that last bit kind of gets nullified by the first bit. It’s so “to avoid any appearance of illegal conduct staff members may not hold or trade securities of any publicly traded companies they cover regularly.” That’s effectively all companies for us. And so, you know, if we’re not allowed to hold those companies, then this whole thing about holding securities for at least six months, and no short term trading becomes moot. I mean, I had some individual stocks when I was hired at Marketplace and was strongly encouraged to sell them all and just shift over to mutual funds for my retirement account, which I did. And I know a lot of the other reporters and folks do the same thing. It’s just you never want to have an issue where people are wondering if you’re trying to make money off your coverage, so it’s easier just to avoid it. Even if I sometimes cry when I see how much money I would have made had I held those stocks all these years. Okay…

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, good question though Carl, thanks for it. Yeah, yeah, anyway, we’re done for today. What do you want to know Wednesday is in the can. If you have a question for us about business or technology or the economy or pretty much anything 508-827-6278 are the numbers you dial. 508-U-B-SMART. U-B-S-M-A-R-T are the letters you dial. Or you can just email us makemesmart@marketplace.org.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Antonio Barreras. Today’s program was engineered by Jay Siebold.

Kai Ryssdal 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our acting senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and On Demand.

Kimberly Adams 

Look at that timing. Look at that.

Kai Ryssdal 

I know right? Trained audio professional.