Best of the Program | 1/7/25

At Blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments.

It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

On today's podcast, Zuck is bringing an end to the Facebook fact checkers in favor of something that looks an awful lot like X.

What's happening there?

Also, Trudeau says he's going to step down, but how long is he going to drag out the process?

And AGI and ASI rapidly approaching.

What will become of us if we outlive our usefulness to us and the latest breakthroughs?

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

I want to talk to you.

Did you see what just happened with Facebook Stew and Mark Zuckerberg?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fascinating.

Yeah, it is.

And I'm, I'm, I'm wondering what is happening here,

you know,

beyond the headline.

Here it is, just so you know.

Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday morning that content moderation and other restrictions on speech will be lifted across Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms as Donald Trump returns to the White House.

No, wait, hold on just a second.

What?

So you know, all traffic decline has been as high as 85 to 90% across all Blaze media pages.

So when I've said, I mean, we've had, and Stu, you can, you probably know the numbers better than I do, we're having more success and a bigger

platform, bigger voice than any time in my career in the last three years.

The show and everything is just on fire.

And yet, our traffic on social media has declined by 85 to 90%.

It's just not possible.

There's no way other than we've been severely

contained, if you will.

And I'd like to ask Mark Zuckerberg, where do I go to get my audience back?

Where do I, you know,

you've kind of, people have kind of fallen out of the habit.

If you get all of your news from Facebook, God forbid, or Instagram.

We've been so suppressed.

All of a sudden, are we going to pop back up?

It'd be interesting to see.

By the way, this is why your direct support to Blaze TV means so much.

We wouldn't have been able to survive everything if we hadn't built the Blaze and built it the way we did.

So thank you for your subscription.

If you haven't subscribed, please do today.

So he's ending all of the

content moderation.

Now, what he did before was to go to places that, you know, they're absolute experts.

You know, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, they know what's going on.

The Pointer Institute, they know what's true.

And they've decided that they are going to go back to their roots, I'm quoting, and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

More specifically, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X.

Now,

hang on just a second.

Wasn't X

the most dangerous platform in the world?

Weren't those community notes just not enough?

The company's

third-party fact-checking program was put into place following Trump's first election

to

manage content and misinformation on its platforms, which executives conceded was a result of political pressure.

But now they say they've just gone too far.

We went to independent third-party fact-checkers, says the global chief of affairs officer at Meta.

It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact check because basically they get to fact check whatever they see on the platform.

No, that can't.

It can't be true.

No, it's true.

No, too much bias.

That's what they were doing.

Yes.

But they're just checking facts, Glenn.

Yes, I know.

I know.

Isn't that weird?

Now listen to this.

I mean, today, I think today's show is kind of

based on

no.

Really?

You know,

the things that are happening now, wait until next hour.

I'm going to tell you a story

that is

just

a jaw-dropping in

how the world works between you and the elites.

Here's a case in this hour.

We're talking about Facebook.

How does it work between you and the elites?

Well, they didn't listen to you.

They wanted to shut you up.

They went to the elites who were on the winning side last time and said, okay, what do we need to do?

What do we need to do to make sure that

we're on your side and we can get all that government money and nobody's gonna hassle us?

What do we need to do?

So they did it.

And they went to the elite's selection of fact checkers.

Now that the world has changed, at least here in America, Now they're still not listening to you.

This isn't because you said something.

This is because Donald Trump has changed America.

And now they see the writing on the walls.

And so again, it's not you.

It's power.

And it's disgusting.

The company is ending their fact checkers completely.

And it will instead rely on the platform users to false flag or yeah, flag false or misleading content.

Instead of going to some so-called,

this is Facebook saying this.

Instead of going to some so-called expert, it will rely on the community and the people on the platform to provide their own commentary to

something that they've read.

This is

what freedom of speech is.

There's no expert that sits around in your, you know,

in your, in your town, that checks everything somebody says and then says, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, that's untrue.

And they have a political bias that it just doesn't happen in real life.

But again, let's remember that social media is not real life.

But at least it's starting, maybe it will start reflecting it a little bit more where you have the freedom to say what you think.

Pause on that one point for one quick second.

Sure, because

Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have a rivalry, right?

Like, remember they were going to have a fight?

They were going to do like a cage match a year or two ago?

There's a rivalry here.

For him to come out and say this, he said this on video, Zuckerberg,

saying that they would go to community notes, not just go to community notes, not just get rid of their fact checkers, but go to the community notes.

And as he said, similar to the way X does it,

he actually admitted that basically, like, we tried something, they tried something, theirs is better, we're going with theirs.

It's It's like a tech bro

federalism.

That's a good thing and I think a tough admission for a guy like Mark Zuckerberg.

I mean, I am with you in that I think they've run this so poorly and they have taken companies and content companies and given them this impression that they could advertise to people, gain followers, and then get their content distributed and then pulled the rug out from underneath them years ago and destroyed dozens and dozens of websites and

companies because of it.

That being said, this does kind of seem like a good change.

Like, I don't know if it's just Glenn, them kissing Trump's butt and realizing if Trump comes in,

he's going to be a different kind of president and they're in a different environment and they better change or they're going to get

hammered.

Or if it's a real change.

But either way, I I think it's a positive one.

Well, you know me.

I always look for the best in people, honestly.

You do.

I am kind of a poor judge of character because of that,

because

I see people for who I think they could be maybe at times.

And I kind of look at it like, I think that's who they really are going to be.

And they usually disappoint because

people don't become the people they could be be most times.

Instead, they settle for what they are or what they've allowed

themselves to become because they don't have a true center of truth.

They don't know who they are and how they relate to all eternal truths.

And so they get lost really easily.

But when I sat with Zuckerberg, this is more in line with the Zuckerberg that I sat with.

However, you know,

I was, I think I was

Greatly conned

with Zuckerberg.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, we went back and forth on it, I think.

We did.

Because I do think there's a part of him that would like to be clear of all of this.

I think he has other

large goals

in his life other than navigating every political thing that pops up.

So I am so glad you said that.

What are his big goals?

What does he really want to do?

Do you know?

What is he focusing on?

Hmm.

I mean,

he has gone through several phases, right?

The company started going towards the metaverse, right?

They changed the company to Meta

couple years ago.

Uh-huh.

That was a...

That tells you everything you need to know.

It tells you everything to know.

Meta is all about virtual reality, correct?

So virtual reality.

Guess who's invested billions of dollars in VR?

The United States Army, Navy, and Air Force, all going to virtual reality.

Okay.

Meta has lost about $50 billion in its reality labs division, augmented reality, virtual reality, and the metaverse.

So

what?

So what?

What's happening here?

I think what this is partially, I mean, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt to some degree,

but I think partially what this is about is

making sure that the government contracts don't stop with meta.

Make sure that they are

able to get some of that money from the United States in the use of VR because that's where he really

where his heart is.

That's what he really wants to do.

Now they lost $50 billion in their reality labs.

However, if you look at Facebook's revenue, they're subsidizing all of this stuff.

Facebook, the revenue was expected to go up to $100 billion in 2024.

Facebook's advertising revenue is now expected to grow over $127 billion by 2027.

So that's the cash cow.

But where his heart is

is

VR and AR.

And he wants to make sure that he gets, he's not off the government teat.

Otherwise, his

real passion is gone.

I think that's what's happening.

Speculation, but I think that's what's happening.

It's got to be part of it, right?

It's got to be part of it.

Yeah.

You know, but I wonder and hope that it is more than that.

I mean, because I had the same reaction to Elon Musk when he started having this transition of real skepticism.

I didn't buy it.

I mean, the guy's been like the biggest climate activist in America.

Why would we believe all of a sudden he's coming around to these sorts of ideas?

Does seem now that that's pretty legitimate from Elon Musk?

Could it be?

It's pretty legitimate from Zuckerberg.

Remember,

he did some of this stuff before the election.

He did signal this stuff.

He did testimony.

He outed some of the government intrusions before the election happened.

He called Trump a badass after the assassination attempt.

Correct.

He said that was his turning point,

was the assassination attempt.

He said that's when he realized, oh, this guy is really a badass.

This guy is actually,

you know, what he says he is, to some degree, at least, according to Mark Zuckerberg.

You're listening to the the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Let me just ask you, Stu,

you know, the president has talked about the Panama Canal, which I think he's very serious about.

If he could take it back, I think he would,

but I don't think he can legally.

So I don't know what he's doing with Panama, but the Panama Canal, that's going to be a big thing.

In my view, could be wrong.

It's going to be an important thing to him and his administration.

But he again has brought up Greenland and buying Greenland, which I'm all for, quite honestly.

I mean, how much could it be, honestly?

What is on Zillow with Beaumanao?

What's that?

I don't.

I don't.

There's no comparables.

Yeah.

The,

you know,

the way that we waste money, that would be the best thing we could do besides buying like gold or Bitcoin.

That would be the best thing is buy land.

And

it would be great.

And Greenland is rich in resources.

You know, I don't know.

I mean, I know they want to get away from Denmark.

Is it Denmark or

just Mark?

It's like Mark's bullying

who owns Greenland.

I don't know who.

I think it's Denmark that they belong to.

And they don't like it.

And they're told exactly how to live their lives from Denmark.

And they're like, we're closer to America than Denmark.

However, now listen, if this doesn't sound like negotiation, however, we are not for sale.

I mean, we don't want to be in bed with Denmark anymore.

You know, and we are so rich with resources right now.

I just, I mean, we're really not for sale.

But hey, we love Donald Trump in America.

Look how you open that negotiation door and Donald Trump's going to walk through.

And

I mean Denmark well maybe Denmark too Greenland will be ours if you open yourself to negotiation but he's also talking about Canada being the 51st state and I thought that was because of Trudeau

you know just making him into a governor

but isn't there any chance he really would love to have Canada as a 51st state well yeah I mean

I mean there are some arguments as to why not but I think you start with why not if you could do it sure, it would be great because of all the resources they have and all of that.

Though there would be a lot of negatives.

You'd be importing a lot of socialists into our voting room.

French.

You'd have all the French.

Yeah, you'd have a couple of new senators, right, that would come in that would be Democrats.

That would make things a little more difficult, at least in the short term.

Yeah.

But there's a lot of people.

But you'd also get rid of the CBC.

And so, well, you'd be replacing with ABC.

But ABC looks like the blaze compared to the CBC.

Yes.

yes.

So

that's true.

You know, anything would be an improvement.

But then you also get all that socialized medicine.

Anyway,

Canada is in so much trouble.

Canada is in the worst shape they've ever been in, at least in my lifetime.

And it's all because of Justin Trudeau, who is just...

Horrible.

I mean, he's an egomaniac.

He really is.

Did you hear his, quote, resignation speech yesterday?

It was great.

Could we make it it about him anymore?

And just like, in fact, Sarah, we have part of the speech.

Can we play part of his speech?

Over the holidays.

Okay.

I've also had a chance to reflect and have had long talks with my family about our future.

Okay, stop for a second.

Stop for a second.

Hold on just a second.

I've had time to reflect on what's right for Canada.

And I didn't spend any time talking about my 16%

approval rating.

It didn't even come up.

It didn't even come up.

But anyway, go ahead.

Throughout the course of my career, any success I have personally achieved has been because of their support and with your encouragement.

Yes.

So last night over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I'm sharing with you today.

Okay.

I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process.

Oh, so much like his dad, Fidel.

So

he says here,

I'm going to resign.

I'm going to resign.

Now,

what does that mean in Canada?

Well, he's going to do that after there's a robust effort to find a new leader for the Liberal Party.

Why?

Because currently the Conservative Party is beating them by 24 points.

So there's no way they're going to, there's absolutely no way they're going to win at this point.

So not only does he say it's going to have to happen, you know, after March 1st.

Okay.

So let's see, we have January, February, March 1st.

Okay, so two months to get your crap together.

But not only did he say, I'm going to resign sometime after March,

he has done

something that

I think we would call this martial law, maybe, or

I mean, he suspended the parliament.

It's called porogued there in Canada.

I've porogued the parliament just until March, and that's it.

So what does porogued mean?

It means shutting it down.

Pastries with the

potatoes.

Yeah, that's a pierogui.

Porogued, not so delicious.

Pirogued means you've done everything but dissolve the parliament.

You've shut it down entirely.

They cannot do it.

There's no reason to go to work.

They're in the middle of

what Parliament and Congress does, which I can't explain to you, but they do a lot of stuff.

They're debating and

Parliament is starting to go the opposite direction.

So he's, can you imagine our president if Donald Trump just came in and said, you know what, it's too critical of a time right now.

I'm going to be leaving office in four years, but for the next three years, I'm just suspending Congress.

Can you imagine that?

No, of course not, because it's dumb.

That's what he just did.

It shouldn't be available as an option to the president or the prime minister to just stop Congress or the parliament.

No.

Stupid system.

No.

Okay.

So the reason why he did that is not only just to stay in power and keep his policies exactly where they are,

but also

he did that so they can't have a no confidence vote.

Like today, if he would have said, I'm going to resign, the conservatives could have stood up and said, hey, let's have a vote of no confidence.

And they might have gotten that through.

So that means he just would be removed.

And that would mean that his party would lose to the apple-eating guy.

Now,

I have to tell you,

Pierre something or other, some French name, I know him as the apple-eating guy.

And that might sound like it's, you know,

not necessarily the right thing to do to call the next prime minister the apple-eating guy, but

this is how I know him.

He did an interview with, I think, the CBC,

and this is a left-wing journalist, and he's in Vancouver, BC, and he's eating an apple.

And to make sure the reporter knew exactly how little he thought of them and their questions, he answered while still eating the apple, his body kind of half-turned, not really even

not even really recognizing this guy fully.

In case you've never heard it or seen it, here's that clip.

On the topic, I mean, in terms of your sort of strategy currently, you're obviously taking the populist pathway.

What does that mean?

Well,

appealing to people's more emotional levels, I would guess.

I mean,

certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently.

Like what?

Left wing,

this and that, right-wing.

I mean, it's that type of ideological thing.

I never really talk about left or right.

Anyways, a lot of people.

I don't really believe in that.

Okay.

A lot of people would say that you're simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump.

Like which people would say that?

Well, I'm sure a great many Canadians, but.

Like who?

I don't know who, but.

Well, you're the one who asked the question, so you must know somebody.

Okay.

I'm sure there's some out there, but anyways,

the point of this question is: I mean,

why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given,

you know,

not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page of Donald Trump's book, but

also thinking about what page?

What page?

Can you give me the page?

Give me the page.

You keep saying that.

In terms of turning things quite dramatically in terms of Trudeau and the left wing and all of this, I mean, you make quite a, you know, it's quite a play that you make on it.

So I'm sure.

I'm not sure.

I don't know what your question is.

Okay.

Then forget that.

Why shouldn't Canadians trust you with their vote?

Common sense.

Common

sense for a change.

We're going to make common sense common in this country.

We don't have any common sense in the current government.

So good.

I love that.

On the topic, I mean, in terms of your

crunching of the apple in the middle of the question, it is

so satisfying.

Here's what he said about Israel bombing Iran.

Listen to this.

Yesterday, you said that you endorse Israel proactively defending itself by hitting Iran's nuclear sites, which is something that President Joe Biden does not endorse.

Do you not feel like this could lead to a likelihood of an all-out conventional war between Iran and Israel?

And do you not agree with Joe Biden in his assessment?

I think the idea of allowing

a

genocidal, theocratic,

unstable dictatorship that is desperate to avoid being overthrown by its own people to develop nuclear weapons is about the most dangerous and irresponsible thing that the world could ever allow.

And if Israel were to stop that genocidal, theocratic, unstable government from acquiring nuclear weapons, it would be a gift by the Jewish state to humanity.

Yes.

Quick, porogue the parliament.

Porogue them.

Put them in jail if you have to.

I'll resign eventually when I've figured out a way to rig the system.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Let me talk to you a little bit about

Sam Altman.

He is the guy from OpenAI.

And yesterday, if you missed it, you should go back to the show and listen to the podcast.

Yesterday, hour number two was on the singularity.

This is something that I've been talking about.

Stu, I was talking about this, I think, before you even joined the show.

This might be the longest-running commentary that

I have in my career is what's coming with technology and

AI, AGI, and ASI.

AI is artificial intelligence.

General intelligence, it's what you are, you and I.

It's what we as humans, we're good at many different things.

AGI, artificial general intelligence, is like a human, except it's not just good at things, it masters everything, okay?

Right after that is ASI,

artificial superintelligence.

That's when AI becomes God.

It is more powerful than all of the brains alive on the planet today.

It is more powerful than any supercomputer.

It is, it's godlike, okay?

You won't be able to keep up with it.

You won't be able to understand it.

It is so far beyond humans.

We won't be able to, you just do what it says, thinking that it's right, because

you you don't know what it knows you don't know how it arrived at that or you know or you turn it off but ASI will not allow you to turn it off so

AI we've had AGI

according to Sam Altman we are now at

or soon will be we're at the singularity which means Moore's rule of doubling the chip power every two years is now over.

It's gone from that slope to a straight line up now.

That's the singularity.

Progress that is so rapid you won't be able to keep up with it is now where we're at.

And

AGI, artificial general intelligence, some people didn't think that we would get there.

Many, if not most of the computer scientists believed in AGI we could we could

we could achieve that.

Most people did not think we could could achieve the singularity until 2050, if at all.

And most computer scientists don't think that we'll ever get to ASI, artificial superintelligence, which could mean the end of humanity.

Okay.

Listen to this.

This is from Sam Altman, his blog that's just came out.

We started open AI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI, artificial general intelligence, was possible and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history.

But we wanted to figure out how to build it and make it broadly beneficial.

We were excited to make our mark on history.

Our ambitions were extraordinarily high and so was our belief that the work might benefit society in an equally extraordinary way.

At the time, very few people cared and if they did, it was mostly because they thought we had no chance of success.

AGI

In 2022, OpenAI was a quiet research lab working on something temporarily called Chat

with ChatGPT 3.5.

We are much better at research than we are at naming things.

We had been watching people use the playground feature of our API and knew that developers would really enjoy talking to the model.

We thought building a demo around that experience would show people something important about the future and help us make our models better and safer.

We ended up mercifully calling it ChatGPT instead and launched it on November 30th of 22.

We always knew abstractly that at some point we'd hit a tipping point and the AI revolution would get kicked off, but we didn't know what the moment would be.

To our surprise, it turned out to be this.

The launch of the ChatGPT kicked off a growth curve unlike anything we have ever seen in our company, our industry, and the world broadly.

We are finally seeing some of the massive upside we have always hoped for from AI and we can see how much more will soon come.

It hasn't been easy, the road hasn't been smooth, and the right choices haven't always been obvious.

In the last two years, we had to build an entire company almost from scratch around this new technology.

Now he goes on to building the company and the technology, but I want to skip down

here.

We have done

what is easily some of our best research ever.

We grew from 100 million weekly active users to more than 300 million.

Most of all, we have continued to put technology out into the world that genuinely seems to be loved by people and that solves real problems.

We are proud of our track record in research and development so far.

We are committed to continuing to advance our thinking on safety and benefits sharing.

We continue to believe that the best way to make an AI system safe

is by gradually releasing it into the world, giving society time to adapt and co-evolve with the technology, learning from experience and continuing to make the technology safer.

We believe in the importance of being world leaders on safety and alignment research and in guiding research with feedback from the real world applications.

So safety and alignment research.

What is that?

Well, safety, because

you saw at the beginning of ChatGPT just the hallucinations that ChatGPT could do.

Also, can it ever lie to us?

Can it or will it ever start to look at us?

as we look at insects.

Will it ever start to see that Americans, or I'm sorry, not Americans, humans are the problem?

And the easiest way to solve our problems is to eliminate the humans.

So that's what safety means.

And alignment research means making sure that the AI

and AGI and ASI,

which we will be insects to.

Okay,

it will have no time for us.

It will barely, we will be so far, and I'm using this term clinically, we will be so far beyond retarded to ASI that it will, it has no reason to pay attention to us at all.

So making sure that alignment, that our goals and

its goals remain intact.

But how do you do that?

How do you build a fence around something?

Well, it's like this.

Imagine using a baby gate, you know, the kind that, you know, go over the stairs.

Imagine if somebody said, you know, I got to keep you out of this room.

And they put a baby gate up.

Is that going to concern you?

Are you even going to spend any time worrying about that baby gate?

You'll just step over it.

Okay.

It's it's bad for babies, but that's what we could do to ASI.

Anything that we would want to do,

it's so far beneath ASI, they won't even have to worry about it.

Okay.

We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it.

This is game-changing.

We believe that in 2025, we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.

Stu, what is an AI agent?

I mean, I don't know that I know exactly.

When you talk about AGI and artificial general intelligence, I would think it would be like an assistant.

Like you could have them essentially do any task.

Like you, like you could assign an employee, right?

Like you don't need to program them to do a specific thing.

You could say, hey, we need you to answer the phones here.

We need you to, I mean, it might not be directly like that, but like it's that type of thing that can take a generalized job, a role like that, and do it on its own.

Would you, if you were, if you were hiring people for a company and you had somebody that doesn't make mistakes and was

much smarter than everybody else in the room, would you have them answer the phones?

No, you'd have them at a really high-powered position.

Exactly right.

Right.

So an AI agent, now not the first, the first will be just like that, because remember they say they're slowly going to roll this out so you get used to it.

The first one will be like a secretary, somebody who can take care of, I'll pay the bills, I'll take care of all of this stuff, and we will love it.

The first ones to join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.

will be something, and I'm just imagining this, so please excuse me if you're in this field

for my being a baby gate here.

But as I imagine it, it would be someone that you would have a virtual conference with that looks like a human, sounds like a human, you can have a conversation with, and you could say, look, can you help us on this?

We're trying to figure this out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And they can game change for you your approach in your company.

That's what he thinks is coming this year.

Now he says, we're beginning to turn our aim beyond that to super intelligence in the true sense of the word.

We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future.

With super intelligence,

we can do anything else.

Super intelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we're capable of doing on our own, and in turn, massively increase abundance and prosperity.

Here's the thing, and I want to get into this tomorrow.

Massively increasing abundance and prosperity.

How?

Well, by becoming much more efficient, by spending less to

make more.

But who gets that money?

Where is that abundance?

Things will be cheaper.

But if the jobs are taken by AI or AGI or ASI,

how do you make money?

A 30% disruption is coming in, we will by 2030,

if things play out the way we believe they're going to play out now,

which is

a deeply unsettling of jobs and careers and everything else, at least at the beginning, you're looking at a 30% unemployment rate minimum.

by 2030.

Now, he goes on to say, this sounds like like science fiction right now and somewhat crazy to even talk about.

That's all right, we've been here before, and we're okay with being there again.

We're pretty confident that in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and the need to act with great care while still maximizing broad benefit and empowerment is so important.

Given the possibilities of our work, OpenAI cannot be a normal company.

How lucky and humbling it is to be able to play a role in this work.

Attention, all small biz owners.

At the UPS store, you can count on us to handle your packages with care.

With our certified packing experts, your packages are properly packed and protected.

And with our pack and ship guarantee, when we pack it and ship it, we guarantee it.

Because your items arrive safe or you'll be reimbursed.

Visit theupsstore.com/slash guarantee for full details.

Most locations are independently owned.

Product services, pricing, and hours of operation may vary.

See Center for Details.

The UPS store.

Be unstoppable.

Come into your local store today.