♪ host: it is friday, september 6, 2024.

we will talk about american manufacturing jobs in the future of ai but we begin in the op-ed pages of today's paper where the publisher of the new york times took the unusual step of submitting an editorial to the washington post warning about efforts to undermine freedom of the press in america and around the world. this morning we'll take you through that op-ed as we hear from you. do think the idea of a free press is under threat in this country? phone lines are split as usual by political party. democrats (202) 748-8000. republicans (202) 748-8001 up independents (202) 748-8002. you can also send us a text. if you do please include your name and where you are from. otherwise catch up with us on social media. on x @cspanwj it is -- on x it

is @cspanwj. on facebook facebook.com/c-span. that op-ed appears in the washington post. "how the private war against press freedom could come to america." this is why he says he wr this op-ed. he writes "as the steward of one of the country's leading news organizations i feel compelled to speak about the threat to the free press as my predecessors i ha done to leaders of both parties. do so here in the pages of an esteemed competitor becaus i believe the risk is shared by our entire profession as well as all who depend on it. i am not advising people how to vo there are countless issues on the ballot closer to voters hearts than protecting my broadly unpopular profession, but the weakof a free and independent press matters

whatever your party or politics. the flow of trustworthy news and information is critical to a free and secure and prosperous nation. this is what my defense of the free press has been a point of rare bipartisan consensus throughout the nation's history." ajay sulzberger writing in the pages of the washington press. he makes it clear where he believes the threat is coming from. he mentioned donald trump's name 22 times in that op-ed, joe biden just one mention. kamala harris gets zero mentions. this is part of what he says about donald trump. "asseeko return to the white house former president trump and allies he declared their intentions to increase the tax on aress he has long derided as the en the people. trump pledged lar th the mainstream media wil thoroughly scrutinized for their coverage of people and events

and a senior trump aide made the threat even more explicit, saying we will come after you, whcrimally or civilly. there is already evidence trump and hi meawhat they say. by the end of his first term his anti-press rhetoric, which contributed to a search an anti-vaccine sentiment in this country and around the world quietly shifted into action." this is in the pages of the washington post. he is the editor of the new york times. this 4000 word op-ed first posted online yesterday and in the pages of the washington post today. we are asking you about that this morning. (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. independents (202) 748-8002. already some comments on our facebook page.

there is a social media post, james writing about the free press being under threat. "it alwaysnd always will be." doug says it is controversy because most of the press has been so biased and partisan. if the system is to ith any level of trust and fairness freedom of the press is no more rtant and dependent on genuine utlity of the press. otherwise he says i think what people perceive asis little more than filtered pa op-ed's and inevitably it becomes goodbye to trust and legitimate functions. we'll go through more in this first hour of the washington journal. we will go through more of the op-ed. we mostly want to hear from you on the phones. it is riding in sterling, virginia. independent -- it is ryan in sterling, virginia. independent. caller: i would say independent media is under threat that is

truly breaking away from partisanship or large corporations running the media. from the government, within itself yes. host: when you say within itself where you see it? caller: i see it from the media making things so partisan and so biased that they are discrediting themselves. when you see new stories every single day that can be debunked or where reporters do not backtrack or apologize for the misinformation they are spewing, it discredits themselves as an organization. it is a threat they are not watching out for themselves. host: give me a recent example you see? caller: just give me a second. i am driving right now.

i would say the biggest thing for me is covid vaccines. the backtracking from initially where everything on the covid vaccine was 100% they will keep you safe, he will never contract covid. as time went along is obvious the vaccines were not as effective as initially talked about. that is one example. going farther back, close to my heart is the iraq war, where the media jumped on the bandwagon of lying to the american people on the iraq war. we have not seen anything come out about apologizing for that. host: that is ryan in virginia. just as in nebraska -- jess is in the line for nebraska. republicans. caller: the biden laptop.

the 51 security agents. abc, cbs, nbc. they are all in cahoots with the democratic party. everybody knows it now. they do not even care any longer. they do not have any pride about what they are doing. they are all just falling in line. everybody knows it now. the whole world knows it. without a free press that is going to be honest, this country will fall. no doubt about it. that is the only thing keeping us together or supposed to. host: who is the free press keeping this country together? who do you look to? caller: i look to fox. i am a trump backer all the way. if you are honest with yourself, all you have to do is look at the last four years and how the press has become so biased.

they do not care about anything any longer. it is just let get the democrat in. it is crazy. this country will fall because of the press. host: that is jeff in nebraska. this is a gallup poll from the 1970's through 2023. trust in mass media in this country over that time. in the 1970's the percentage of respondents who said they had a great deal of trust in mass media, the numbers were in the 70's. they begin to fall in the late 1970's through the 1980's and 1990's. as of the end of 2023 just a 2% of americans saying they have a great -- just 32% of americans saying they have a great deal of trust.

the percentage of those saying they have no trust at all now higher than that at 39%. this is great in michigan. you -- this is greg in michigan. you are next. what are your thoughts about is the free press under threat in america? caller: i think that it is. a lot of the reason why is because of people's misunderstanding of the press and the way the press has changed over the last 25 years. there used to be a clear difference between news and opinion. very observable difference. that has merged together in a lot of different media sources nowadays. that leads to a lot of people's mistrust. what i wanted to mention is what i do is when i am dealing with

an unfamiliar new source is i will go to a website like mediabiasedfactcheck.com and look up the organization. for instance, c-span, under mediabiasfactcheck, they rate you as the least biased. and you are rated very high regarding factual reporting. i would use a guideline like that to determine whether or not i am reading something that is very biased left-leaning or right-leaning. i tend to give greater weight to sources that are towards the middle with high factual reporting. i have 10 years as a magazine editor for community news and i

also have a degree in psychology. in both of those fields i find it is possible to report in an unbiased manner and check yourself for personal bias. a lot of times news sources are left-leaning or right-leaning and opinion is mixed in with news. it is important to be cautious using a new source, especially if it is unfamiliar to you. host: when you were that editor, how did you do that check on personal bias? what with that consist of to make sure that was not bleeding in to what you are doing? caller: the good thing about it is it was a small monthly publication that dealt with community news. what i would do is i would check

myself for personal bias -- for instance i might be doing a puff piece on a nonprofit group where i do not like the person who runs it and i'm not a big fan of what the organization does. but i need to be unbiased in my opinion, so i just do not let my opinion loud the questions i would ask and i let the person speak for themselves and i quote them accurately. you just check for personal bias. the same thing you would do in psychology. you should be willing to treat somebody who is doing something or things in life you might find personally disgusting. you have to check yourself for personal bias. you do not let it cloud the issue. host: mediabiasfactcheck, they

say they're 100% independent, founded in 2013, a website that promotes awareness of media bias and misinformation by raiding the bias and factual accuracy. how did you come across that website and why do you trust it? host: i -- caller: i stumbled across it. i simply saw a new source i do not know and i was wary of the information so i asked google, i put in the organization name and media bias hit enter, and that site comes up. that is the one i use most frequently but there are different ones out there. i find in reviewing their detailed report that i can confirm with them they were giving me an accurate

explanation as to media sources or a lack of media bias. host: thank you for chatting about it. we will head over to point pleasant beach, new jersey. joseph, republican. caller: let me say two quick points. i was watching c-span yesterday. i tried getting on, i forget the woman's name that was on yesterday, the host. she was letting people call up. she spent -- c-span tries to play to the middle but someone was calling and calling trump people and she let them go on. about 10 minutes -- someone calling trump evil and she let them go on and on. then someone called and said some things about illegal aliens. some of them were true.

some of the illegals are illegal aliens. -- some of the illegals are rapists. she hung up on him right away. host: sighed from friday morning the host from yesterday? -- aside from friday morning quarterbacking the hose from yesterday? caller: i was trying to call in. the new york times, that guy has more no one to be saying something. eight or nine years ago they were part of a conspiracy -- it happened. they tried to frame president trump -- you talk about propaganda yesterday about propaganda and russia. it gave -- clinton and her liberal buddies went to russia

to get dirt on my president and nobody went to jail for that in the new york times was one of the biggest companies that pushed that. it was all made up. they tried to frame him. nobody went to jail. nobody? host: that is joseph in new jersey. this is more in today's washington post. it is about 4000 words. the story of the anti-press efforts aund the world corethe foundational importance of press m to democracy. access to trustworthy news does not just leave the public better informed, it strengthens business and makes nations more secure. in place of mistrust it encourages civic engagement and on earth corruption and incompetence to ensure the good of the nation is placed above self-interest of any given leader. that is what gets compromised when the free and independent

press is weakened. ha sulzberger writing in the washington post today. this is more of your comments from social media on facebook. brad likes can you call it the press anymore? more like people who like to read and write their personal opinions. matthew saying most of the pre has forfeiting their freedom by aligning themselves with the democricarty. the real question isf e press is interfering with freedom, one of the worst things i've seen as editorializing reporters taking over mainstream news program and slanting the coverage to their ideology. taking your phone calls in the first hour of the washington journal. asking you is freedom of the press in this country under threat? phone lines as usual. this is jack, a democrat in upper marlboro, maryland. caller: good morning. to answer your question, yes, the free press is under threat.

we have to remember we had a sitting president donald trump literally call our free press the enemy and that is not a good thing. we also cannot forget fox news, if you want to call it news, paid almost $800 million because they chose to perpetuate the big lie in 2020 that the election was stolen. our free press is under threat, it is in trouble. unfortunately the press is still struggling with how to cover someone like donald trump. if they tell the blatant truth than trump supporters will say the media is biased when in fact the media is just reporting the news as it is. trump literally tried to overthrow the government and the press reports he is a threat to democracy somehow that is interpreted as being biased when

we all saw what happened on january 6. the free press is in trouble. i would also say social media, the internet also contributes to that because people are consuming their news from different sources that are not really the press. fox news, oann, newsmax, all of those organizations are under civil litigation for perpetuating the lies in 2020. that is part of the problem. where we consume our news and what we choose to believe. you have all of the qanon conspiracies. all of those things bubbled up and you can see some of that in congress. they repeat these things. it has become tough for people to believe what they are reading and what they are seeing from our traditional news media. we have to figure out a way to filter out the noise stop part

of the onus is on the consumer. we have to be smarter about what we believe in what we do not believe. host: you talk about the traditional news media. define who that is. do you think there is more trust in traditional news media in this country or in websites and news from twitter -- is social media garnering more trust than those traditional sources? caller: i think so. in this day and age i would say that is the case. we no longer look to the new york times or the washington post as our trusted source of news. i do, but i would not say that is the case for the majority of the people in this country who are in tune with what is going on in the world. they are not looking to the washington post or the new york times. they are looking at qanon, they

are looking at youtube, they are looking at x. all of these different types of media sources and none of these people are credentialed journalists. they are just opinionated people who have an opinion one way or the other. that is what they trust. that is who they believe. host: this is mohammed in decatur, georgia. independent. good morning. go ahead. turn your radio or tv down. caller: thanks phrenology me. -- thanks for acknowledging me. i agree. host: you agree that what? i think we lost mohammed. we will head to san jose. steve, thank you for being up

early. caller: i have not heard the word but sadly, yes, the freedom of the press is under threat. sadly it is from the government. the perfect guest you should have had on before you took phone calls, you should have interviewed matt to leiby -- matt talibi, a democrat journalist who is allowed to investigate twitter with elon musk. what he found was the fbi put pressure and made a strong suggestion that it would go easy, that fbi could cause trouble, that is the message twitter got, if they handled the

hunter biden laptop the fbi's way. he would have been the perfect guest. host: it was the twitter files was the name of that series of reports. caller: yes. i was shocked that the democrats weaponized the fbi. there is no doubt about it. they had no business getting involved with what goes on at twitter. that is a threat. as long as that exists to where the judicial, the fbi, and different departments of the government are getting involved with freedom of the press, we

are in a sad state of affairs because we have lost our checks and balances. the press is a check and balance on what goes on in the government. host: in the washington post op-ed sulzberger is very concerned about the government getting too involved in what is going on in media sources. this is a bit lengthy but to give you a sense of his specific concerns he says to ensure we are prepared for whatever is in the future my colleagues and i have spent months studying how press freedom is under attack in hungary as well as other democracies such as india and brazil. the political and media environment is different in the campaigns have seen varying tactics and levels of success but the pattern of anti-press action reveals a common threat. these new would be have developed a style more subtle than their counterparts in totalitarian states such as

russia and china and saudi arabia who censor or kill journalists. he says this playbook has five parts. one is to create a climate hospitable the crackdowns on the media by normalizing the harassment of the people who produce it. two, manipulate legal and regulatory authority such as taxation and immigration enforcement to public -- to punish journalists and news organizations will exploit the courts to impose additional logistical and financial penalties on journalism in cases without legal merit. increase the scale of attacks on journalists and their employees in parts of the public-private sector to adopt versions of these tactics and use the levers

of power not just to punish independent journalists but reward those who demonstrate fealty to their leadership. this includes helping supporters of the ruling party gain control of news organizations financially weakened by all of the after mentioned efforts. these are the new playbooks to crack down and limit free press in countries that have free press protections. a.g. sulzberger laying these out in his op-ed today. "how the private war -- how the private were against freedom could come to america." cynthia, democrat, good morning. caller: i am calling about the freedom of our press and i feel it is under attack. i also feel that we should hold we get our news like fox news, they got sued and they lost. we should hold them accountable.

dan rather. years ago he put out a story about george bush and he did not vet it. it was not true. he was gone the next day. i was like what happened to him because i used to watch him, and then i heard. i feel like if you are caught lying or not giving the truth about something you should be held accountable. i do agree with many of the callers that they do not give the news, they have to give their opinion about what it could be or should be. what i like to do is i like to watch all four, msnbc, cnn, fox news and newsnation. i think newsnation is the most honest out of all of them. they do have histrionics but

they do not -- i trust them more than i do the others. that is all i have to say. host: this is richard in minneapolis. republican. caller: good morning. i think the press brought this on themselves by not reporting accurately. let me give you a couple of examples. all of the stations and maybe some of the newspapers, when they were reporting on trump, encouraging the riot of january 6, they got trump saying let's go down to the capital and protest. they cut off the part that says peacefully protest. trump is saying that, you can

look it up on your website. another example, how about the charleston protest when they are trying to say trump said there are good people on both sides, he probably said that, but a couple sentences later he said we have to condemn this white racism and any kind of racism. it is on your own website. people have to look this stuff up. the mainstream press is not reporting completely. they leave things out, which gives the wrong impression. host: can i ask you about a story in the washington post today, how they describe something in the washington post and get your reaction? the front page story in the washington post, this op-ed is in the back of the a section, this is on the front page.

it is about trump supporting elon musk as a new efficiencies cazr if he becomes president -- a new efficiency czar. this stuck out, describing elon musk noting he is also the tesla and space-x executive, they say he endorsed former president trump after trump was slightly wounded and an attempted assassination in butler, pennsylvania. how do you read those words "slightly wounded" in that story. is that the washington post to depicting accurately or what happened or do you read it as the washington post trying to minimize what happened? how do you read that sentence? caller: "slightly wounded," i think that is not reporting completely. elon musk, he should probably stay out of the government.

he should go home and smoke some more pot. he comes up some good ideas while he is on pot. i do not think he should be in government in any way. he should advise trump a little and carry on. host: that is richard it minneapolis. just about 7:30 on the east coast. speaking about former president trump and vice presidenta harris, a quick reminder that c-span will have full coverage of next tuesday's abc news presidential debate between the ce psident and the former president. c-span's coverage begins at 8:00 eastern and at 9:00 the abc news debate simulcast w begin. following that debate we will tane calls aou reaction. livecorage on c-span2, c-span now, and also c-span.org. we want to know what you think. you think to fates matter.

will it impact your vote this fall? you can vote on those questions at c-span.org/poll or use the qr code on your screen. you can vote now at c-span.org/poll and we will be showing you the results throughout the week. the question, do debates matter the number of viewers that have responded to that question, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. 76% saying they do matter. just when he 4% say no. -- just 24% say no. that debate is on tuesday. we hope you'll join us on c-span. the question this morning on "washington journal" is freedom of the press under attack in the wake of a large editorial in the washington post about that. this is chris in new jersey, independent. caller: i apologize beforehand,

i got my one-year-old son if you hear him. host: don't worry about that at all. caller: i think the press is perennially under threat globally, whether it is throwing doubt at them that jack from maryland eloquently was talking about, calling them the enemy of the people. there was another reported story out of johnstown, another rally in pennsylvania where an attendee of the rally went and attacked the press box and trump said don't worry about him, he is one of ours. not for nothing, but where it did get reported, this was reported in the american prospect, where it was reported they took the trump press

secretary, they took her line and reported like that was the line and she was basically saying we do not know whether he was democrat or republican or what and it was just accepted uncritically and then moved on. that is a trend among the global right wing. in israel they have killed more than 100 journalists over there? these are things that need to be brought to light. one last comment, i don't think enough hay is made out of reagan overturning the fairness doctrine which at least mitigated phenomenon like fox news and oan from arising. that is also a big problem. a corporate takeover, a

right-wing takeover of our news sources. host: stay on the line for just a second. i will point out that a.g. sulzberger quotes ronald reagan, reagan saying there is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong, and independent rest for our success and what the founding fathers called our noble experiment in self-government. that was ronald reagan's quote. you mentioned you have your one-year-old son in your hands and we heard them a second ago. what you want him to grow up and go into journalism? how would you feel about him taking a job in journalism when he grows up? caller: i think there are very few more honorable positions, occupations in the world than journalism. true journalism, not sean hannity commenting on the television.

i like what germany's kate hill has been doing. -- i like what jeremy schathill has been doing and what rick perlstein has been doing. even though the new york times, their foreign policy angle is not always accurate and they kind of take -- i will leave it at that. that will happen. people are people. people have perspectives. it is up to the viewer and the reader to have critical thinking skills to be able to see through the b.s. and ask questions about what they are hearing and reading. that does not mean the press should be called from a president be called the enemy of the people and encourage violence against the press, at least intermittently. that is insane. that being said, if my son -- i

am a historian. i have a phd in history. if my son wanted to go into journalism, i would fully support that. host: thanks for the call. what is your son's name? caller: isaiah. host: nice to hear from you and isaiah this morning. this is charlene on the line for democrats in the hoosier state. good morning. caller: a lot of people have made my point but i had to react to -- i think he was from oklahoma disparaging abc, nbc, cbs and you asked him who he listened to and he said fox. they have been charged with lying to their viewers. you not understand that? they probably do not know what happened because fox will not report that. the term you used from the article about trump's injuries,

"slightly wounded"? what would it be called? severely wounded? no. he was slightly wounded. donald trump has convinced all these people do not believe the press, not believe the government, not even believe your neighbors. the only person you can believe is him. that is right out of the authoritarian handbook. the press is in trouble and it is because of people like donald trump and i am so sick of him. host: a.g. sulzberger making it clear where he thinks the threat is coming from. it is a 4000 word piece. he mentioned donald to -- he mentioned donald trump 22 times. viktor orban. joe biden gets one mention and kamala harris get zero mentions.

the headline "how the private war against press freedom could come to america." this is sterling, virginia. republican. caller: i am an old-time republican. i would like to thank chris and isaiah for their talk. i agree with everything he said. i think that is an awesome dome you have on them shoulders. mine looks like somebody did doughnuts with a rototiller. never mind that. i think there are some things the press has missed. i have lived and worked for the state and county and municipal as a building restorer building maintenance.

i have worked for white welfare queens and black ones. the white ones have been a lot meaner. i work for a single mother of two juvenile delinquents. host: bring me brak -- bring me back to press freedom. caller: you guys are treated like pinyon as. you need a buzz -- like pinatas. you need a buzzer so when people are abusing the moderator you can hit the button or it cuts them off or lights flash. that is not right, man. host: this is john in venice, florida. independent. caller: thank you for taking my call. i think the problem with the press is too much sensationalism. i cannot hear what you're saying, i have my tv turned down. host: i'm just listening. caller: i think a lot of the

problem with the press's day produce articles that produce sensationalism and i think the reason i the people do not trust the media anymore, and rightfully so, as they have become so biased. one of these callers talked about trump getting slightly wounded. the truth is they tried to kill the man. why can't they say that? it was in assassination attempt. did they report on the people that were guarding him were department of homeland security people with very minimal training? where was secret service at? where was the accountability? they should dive into stuff like that. host: this is the washington examiner about how the media covered donald trump and how the

media has covered kamala harris since she has moved to the top of the ticket, saying the media has gone on a kamala harris binge since the vice president moved swiftly to replace president joe biden as the democratic party's candidate of choice, giving her the most positive coverage in modern history. at the same time and nearly as expected, the same media has gone in a scorched-earth campaign against former president donald trump, giving the republican nominee what is likely to be a historic level of negative coverage. that assessment from the latest review of network news from the conservative watchdog media research center, which found 84% of the coverage on harris has been positive while 89% of trump's has been negative on the network cbs, nbc, and abc. the report states that not only has harris received a 66% more airtime than former president trump, but the spin of harris coverage is more positive than

any other major party nominee even as trump's coverage has been nearly entirely hostile. caller: i agree with that. i believe they are picking and choosing who they support because they are biased. i would like to mention that although fox news has been sued, i think there are lawsuits against cnn, msdnc is what i call them. i like that article and i will look up and read it. host: it is the washington examiner, the report is from the media research center. we have had the author and the media research center on the program if you want to look up past appearances at c-span.org. this is mary in cincinnati. democrat. good morning. caller: i have been listening to you. i really feel as though the press is under threat. the free press. not particularly more than

historically but in general there is a tendency to regard, what is it, don't shoot the messenger? information is out there and we can source it. host: david is in ohio. republican. good morning. caller: i would like to thank you for the format and a sincere thanks to brian lamb who put all this together. host: appreciate that. caller: softball versus hardball. the multiple-choice dana bash interview given the other day with kamala harris, that is not journalism. that will not support their industry. the other thing i noticed on the hardball side, i watched an interview where they had kristen welker on meet the press and she

was interviewing jd vance and she would not let him speak. when they come across like they are supporting one candidate and trying to prop them up and support them, but that in the other hand letting the other person speak, they cut them off or are rude to them. my mom is 82 years old. she did not know what was going on. she walked in the room and she said why is that lady so angry? she meant kristen welker. the gold standard of journalism is tim russert. he was a pressure test. if you want to check a product going out the door of the factory and it needs to hold water you have a pressure test. tim russert, it did not matter if you are an independent, republican, he put your feet to the fire. if you answered well, good for you, if you do not come

everybody learned. even the candidate learned how to answer better. host: you mentioned a pressure test. how do you read this sentence from the story of the front page of the post in which they are talking about donald trump and the assassination attempt. talking about elon musk, who is also a tesla and spacex executive endorsed former president trump after trump was "slightly wounded and an attempted assassination in butler, pennsylvania." is that accurate reporting ores that try to minimize what happened? caller: you can make an argument that it is technically correct. in everybody's mind it is like they are trying to limit to not make trump a national hero for what he did. i would like to add real quick. i've seen paula krugman -- paul krugman robert reisch say how bad the world will be if trump is elected.

i never saw one of them on television telling us i was wrong, i did not get this right and i did not get that right. they never apologized. the media will throw all of the mud but if they say we hit the wrong window, they never apologize. host: is that the mark of a trustworthy media, a correction page in a newspaper, a we want to let you know this was wrong and we are trying to correct it? caller: if it was really sincere and you could tell that. kristen welker made a mistake the other day. i think she said harris and biden had both been to see the families -- i think that was an honest mistake and they apologized for that. most times they won't and most times they don't. we believe in a free press and

we desperately need these people to stop being partisans and adjust the pressure test so we can figure out who we want to vote for. host: thanks for the call from ohio. just about 10 minutes left in this segment. one more part from a.g. sulzberger's column in today's washington post. he said those cheering on attacks against the media would do well to remember why press freedom is not a democratic or republican ideal but in american one. the founders understood it provided a check against government overreach and a mentor who held office. abuses of power by one has a tendency to boomerang when the political tide turns. we have been trying to take you through this op-ed. it is 4000 words long. it is in the washington post, even though it is from the publisher of the new york times, a.g. sulzberger. this is john in norfolk, virginia.

independent. caller: good morning. i don't think the press is under attack. i think the press has voluntarily given up its independence. like most of us would agree, i don't think you can turn to a station where you cannot decide which side they are on. most people admit about fox news and newsmax lean to the right. a lot of people are in denial about cnn, msnbc, even c-span yourself, which i hear a lot of people call in and say you are more of a left-leaning organization. i think you are in denial about that. i've never heard anyone say you are more of a right wing organization, have you? host: if you go on twitter or listen to collars on a day in and day out basis we get hit for being too much one way and the other way. it happens and i think that sort

of criticism from both sides probably means we are doing about what we should be doing. to answer your question, yes, i have heard that. caller: can you direct me to that? i've never heard anybody call in and accuse you of being too right-leaning. i heard people accuse you of giving trump too much airtime. i think you, just like most networks come you give the trump airlines because he is good -- give trump the airtime because he is good for ratings. host: keep watching. i am sure you will hear it down the road. caller: this is colette in oregon, good morning. i really feel the beginning of the downfall of some of the bad news we get is the fairness doctrine. it was in place from 1949 to

1987 and ronald reagan decided we do not need it. the fairness doctrine required that the news media give equal time to each candidate up now it seems like every time you turn the tv on trump is -- if the fairness doctrine was still in they would have to give equal time to other candidates. it would slow down some of the nastiness that goes on. that is my opinion. host: plenty of video on the issue of the fairness doctrine in the c-span archives, including congressional hearings and commissions on the fairness doctrine. this is one from 1987 in which

the fairness doctrine was being debated as c-span cameras were there. go back into the c-span archives if you want to learn more about that over the years. this is joe in morgantown, west virginia. republican. go ahead. caller: i have something to say to you. host: i cannot hear you very well? are you on speakerphone? can you speak into the phone? host: we will work on that. this is tim in new york. independent. caller: good morning. i would like to take this from a different approach. not so much political influence but financial influence. i understand there are six corporations that run everything you read.

if that is the case is being run by sheer money and not so much politics. i do know when trump ran he was able to get a lot of ratings. the media covered him, they gave him free airtime which should not have been done. maybe the fairness doctrine should be put into place. i believe what you just read about him being mildly injured describes it just about right. i remember it started with rush limbaugh. he was an athletic reporter.

he switched to political commentator. fox news came along and the people on fox news do not sound like they question anything else or look at anything else. they just believe -- fox news is like the modern-day verbals. it is terrible. host: we will hold off on nazi comparisons. this is krish in michigan -- this is chris in michigan. caller: the press has been under attack since the beginning of the 2000s when everything from facebook to all of the things that come through the internet, you start seeing a decline in the daily newspapers, there were layoffs with the newspapers. most of all they are able to put the stuff out, a story that has

no truth behind it. it goes out quickly. nobody is able to fact check it. by that time it is too late. anybody can say anything on the internet without any fact checking. everything became privatized. look at facebook and things of that nature taking over the news industry. that has caused a lot of problems. the freedom of the press is definitely under threat. host: it is the old saying, a light can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put on it shoes? caller: yes. what it started, people say we can get the stuff out faster, spreading lies and non-truths. the free has reporters and fact

checking, they end up losing their jobs because everybody gets news from the internet. host: chris in michigan. where'd you get your news? caller: since the election coming up, i check everybody. i see what the yahoos are doing on fox news so i can say i will watch out for that, but you guys, msnbc, and cnn. host: thanks for the call from the wolverine state. this is the palmetto state. patrice in spartanburg, republican. caller: i always remind everyone when i can to call in that the mainstream media is the number one weapon that is used against we the people. i believe that obama put something in place where

propaganda can be spewed throughout the mainstream media. in other words i believe propaganda is basically a bunch of lies. host: how do you define the mainstream media? what does that mean? caller: people like you. you have become popular because we want our voices to be heard. you are moving up in the ranks as far as mainstream media. i consider mainstream media msnbc and fox. everybody knows that fox leans more to the right, whereas the other two are leftist. let me get my points out. on c-span you like to cut people off, especially republicans when

they are trying to make general points. the last time i called in mim answered four democratic lines and the line got cut off on me. my last point is everybody needs to look up who the bosses are to the mainstream media. what trump is trying to do, he goes totally against the mainstream media. i feel like when all is said and done and he is put back in office, it is a lot of mainstream media that will fall. they will be obsolete. those are my points. thank you. host: are you done? caller: caller: good morning the former

president of the united states was shot in the head. the news media took action and invested -- investigative journalists went to get as much information as they could. am i talking about trump? note here that was kennedy. they couldn't get it out of the front page of the news. the story of the attempted murder of donald trump has gone by the wayside. where are the investigative journalists? you read something that showed that it seeks to downplay by saying it was a slight wound. the mainstream media cannot blame themselves. there are mounds and mounds of evidence that the 2020 election was rigged and mainstream media

culprits along with the key social media outlets. i would like to suggest to you that if you could have met you and darren beatty, and folks like that you can give key information on exactly what is going on with the press. i am not talking about having people on 4:15's. god was who said it right. they called the media the drive-by media. they report and leave without so much of an apology. you had a caller who said they are the drive-by media and that is right. host: stick around. plenty more to talk about, including a conversation about

manufacturing jobs in the united states and what the candidates are saying about it. we will be joined by scott paul with the alliance for american manufacturing. and then it jerry khan will join us to discuss his new book, mastering ai: a survival guide to our superpowered future. >> today, watching c-span's 2024 campaign trail, he with the round up of c-span's campaign coverage, providing a one-stop shop to discover what the candidates across the country are saying and first-hand accounts from political reporters, updated poll numbers. watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail today on c-span, online at

c-span.org, or download as a podcast on c-span now, our free mobile app, or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. >> american history tv, saturdays on c-span two, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. the new series historic presidential elections, exploring what made these elections historic and capital areas and the effect on the nation. vice president thomas jefferson on the democratic national party defeated the incumbent candidate, john candidates -- john adams. and then on lectures in history, ohio state university history

professor on the narratives of the civil rights movement and understand the victories, defeats and with the movement was trying to achieve professor jeffries is the brother of hakeem jeffries. and then dennis quaid portrays ronald reagan in the film "reagan" and the story is told in the eyes of a kb g agent and is based on the soviet union's real-life surveillance of ronald reagan. exploring the american story. watch american history tv saturday on c-span two and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >> the house will be in order. c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your

primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where policies are debated and decided, all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. >> "washington journal" continues. host: scott paul is with us for a conversation about u.s. manufacturing pretty is the president of the alliance for american manufacturing which is made up of who? guest: we are unique in washington, a partnership between the largest union, the united steelworkers union, they represent workers in steel, auto, glass, a lot of different sectors and the companies that manufacture in the united states. we bring a labor voice and a worker voice to the table. host: what role does u.s. steel

play in the alliance? guest: u.s. steel is a member. host: president biden announced he will block the acquisition of u.s. steel by the japanese company. does the alliance support that? guest: as you can imagine come with stakeholders on different sides of the issues. i have fallen back to adopt a saying that my mentor in politics said and he was a populist, he said some of my friends are for it and some of my friends are against it and i am with my friends. it is not something i can comment about. i think the interest in steel shows there is a future for the industry. it is not vultures swooping in and plant closures but a story of how can we make -- make new steel mills in the united states and make them more vibrant. a lot of these companies see fantastic opportunity in the

future. host: it sounds like people are on both sides in the alliance. can you explain the process of a president blocking the acquisition? guest: mergers and acquisitions are looked through the lens of competitiveness and anti-competitiveness and is there going to be a monopoly or not in the emerald trade commission examines that. -- and the federal trade commission examines that. there is a review of transactions done and that is one of the reviews but is undergoing. in addition to a conversation between the steelworkers and

u.s. steel about the terms of their contract and who gets the say, there are a couple processes in place. host: they do the review and then they make a recommendation to block it or not? guest: that is correct. host: is the present allowed to do that? can congress step in? guest: congress made the role and i don't know if there is a congressional review but in the past they have looked at transactions through a lens of, do we need to restructure the transaction? is it ok to do all of the assets or not? i will let the process play out. host: plenty of stories in today's papers about the u.s. steel deal or lack thereof here josh rogan wrote in his op-ed is saying politics melt to the u.s. steel deal. the steel is aim for china

exports bonanza. where is the country right now compared to china when it comes to steel production? guest: right now, china makes 55% of all of the steel produced in the world the united states makes a fraction of that. and our production of steel peaked in the 70's and house gunned down since then. it has stabilized and is starting to come back, and there are a number of reasons for that. the problem that he -- the united states and other steelmaking country except china faces is china weight -- makes way more skilled and they can consume in the country and that ends up on the world market and presence prices which drives steelmakers out of business. host: how can they make so much more steel than us? guest: it is a planned economy

and employment mechanism and the chinese government exports the economic problems to other countries. we have seen waves of that. in a number of industries including the steel. the difference is that now countries including the united states but also the european union, canada and several others are standing up saying we are going to put tariffs on the steel so it can't enter the market because this is not coming in based on any market force whatsoever. this is a state driven policy and it is killing our jobs and we have had enough. host: so on tariffs, a "washington journal story, terrace to 25% on top of a separate 25% imposed by the trump administration and other tariffs that have been imposed over the decade. our tears not working? guest: i think tariffs are

working and we have seen that because there has been a lot of stability in the steel industry in the united states. the additional tariffs put in place, under section 301 that the biden administration announced is saying we want to make these exclusionary and we want to make sure there is no chinese skill that is going to come into the u.s. market in any substantial amount. the 25 percent was a start but if we drive that up to 50% will get us where we need to go. host: explain the idea real importation for china tries to circumvent it? guest: if there are the tariffs, the tariffs -- products coming directly from china are stopped but what happens is the chinese

steel companies end up sending the products lightly touched in another country like vietnam or mexico or malaysia and many others, and then you see steel imports from those countries coming up and going into the united states. it erodes the impacts of the tariffs and undermines the policy. i think there is widespread recognition that this is a problem which is why there are efforts to tighten up majors against what we call in the trade world "circumvention." host: side steel, what other products is this trade glut happening and what other products are using circumvention to stop it? guest: automotive is the big one. china is a new player on the global stage, and you don't see a lot of chinese made automobiles in the united states

yet because there is a tariffs and they have had a hard time getting into the market. there is another case where the chinese capacity to make vehicles is about 10 to 15 million cars greater than their ability to consume them domestically. in the united states, we sell about 15 million cars a year period. can you imagine this glut of the 15 million vehicles coming from china looking for a shore to land on and is why chinese vehicles had taken over mexico and many parts of latin america and they have gained a foothold in the european union. this is the case going to the spring tariffs announcement at the biden administration and ounce 100% tariffs on chinese vehicles coming in so that they would be exclusionary they will say it, there is no way you can bring these into the united states because they realize the auto sector is central to lots of other manufacturing in the

united states and would have a devastating effect on communities in america. host: scott paul is our guest. if you want to join the conversation, phone lines democrats (202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001, independents (202) 748-8002 and a special line if you work in the manufacturing sector (202) 748-8003. we will go to that line as often as they call on the line. in about 18 minutes, we are expecting the august jobs number from the bureau of labor statistics. what are you going to be looking for in that report? guest: this is big for a lot of reasons and a lot of people looking at it because we had a weak report overall in the last month, so for july numbers, and

that prompted the fed to say finally, we think it is time for an interest rate cut. this is something we have been saying for well over a year because we have seen it in manufacturing and it has been putting a stifle on manufacturing job growth. one of the things we are going to be looking for is, are we stabilized in manufacturing and is it going down. it is time for the federal reserve to start cutting interest rates. they have increased the cost of capital and put a dampen on some consumer expenditures and they have made it very difficult for our manufacturers in that environment to expand beyond the public investments that have been made. host: sticks and phone calls, stephen in lexington, democrats. caller: thinks for having me.

i am in the manufacturing industry, everything from food and beverage to automotive to just general industrial. one trend i am noticing everywhere is there is not enough people to fill these jobs. there are so many jobs, especially in kentucky and the tier one supporting, there just are not enough people. and there are a plethora of companies that need more people. companies are fighting in the sense for people, welders might have a better shot an hour away getting the dollars to $60 compared to the other towns. people are trading constantly. there are not enough engineers. it is good for me because i am on the automation side, trying to help companies with demanding processes that are manual so they can people somewhere else.

host: not enough people, is that an argument for more immigration into this country? caller: absolutely, absolutely very that is one of the reasons they let so many people in because they know they have to fill the jobs and these people are willing to work. it all connects. host: scott hall? guest: i'm glad you raised these points because this is something i hear from a lot of manufacturers is that there is particularly with an older generation retiring, it is harder just keep up. there are a couple of things absolutely true, one is employees who offer -- employers who better -- who offer better wages and benefits get better workers. kind of alluded to that that the bigger guys have an easier time.

the second thing is, young people today, particularly coming on the pandemic, or is a desire to do remote or hybrid at work. for production and manufacturing, you have to be there in person. younger people look for flexibility in their schedule. manufacturing workers are generally shiftwork and there is a little bit of flexibility but not a lot. the last thing is any sort of reference people have for manufacturing might be coming from their parents who saw a wave of factory closures and are saying, this is going to be bad news, or society saying that you have to get a four-year college degree and there is not a future in manufacturing. the fact is, there is a future in manufacturing and you can make good wages and income. you don't have to get a four-year college degree and you can make as much just about as someone who does have a four year degree and now you can have a stable job.

breaking down the barriers is very important but the ironclad law of economics works that employees -- employers who offer higher wages and benefits have an easier time attracting workers. host: we will go to gym in frederick, maryland. caller: thank you very much for taking my call. i am just a run of the mill worker in the u.s. but i've always looked at the issue of manufacturing and how important it is to bring it back and i also think about it all comes down to one thing and that is cost. when we are up against countries getting support from government, it is confusing to me how we will ever be able to bring back manufacturing because we are addicted to low-cost. as much as we want to bring the

jobs and products back, we probably will be carried over to the purchaser and the buyers in america who will have a problem adjusting to that because it will be a cascade down. what i ask is, what industry do you think we could bring back to the united states and have competitive pricing and provide an alternative to what is available right now in the market? what products or areas can we make investment in and be successful in terms of bringing it back to the u.s.? host: scott hall? guest: i am glad you brought that up. there is a china price that is artificially low and does make it exceptionally difficult to compete. that is why we have tariffs and why we are investing in industries where i see growth,

honestly a lot of them. we have a large consumer market in the united states, 20% of the world products but we produce far less than that. there is a lot of slack we can make up. particularly in clean energy manufacturing. i think there is a lot of homegrown advantages to that. we are bringing back semiconductor manufacturing through the chips act and public private partnerships and there will be an electronics ecosystem that builds up around that. we are good at making complex things like airplanes, automobiles and other modes of transportation equipment. i see that continuing. and to build on something the last caller before jim made, robotics, automation, everything will trend that way. i don't think that reduces the number of jobs, i think it changes them and makes the cost per unit in the united states much more competitive.

we are an energy campion so our energy costs tend to be lower than the rest of the world. there are a lot of things we have going for us as we look ahead. host: you have a link to a new report from the alliance, the ripple effect of china's industrial overcapacity on american manufacturing and factory workers. viewers can view that if they want to go to american manufacturing.org. there was a poll in question was, do you agree or disagree that china is beating the united states in manufacturing? what is the right answer? guest: when you look, china is beating the united states in manufacturing when you look at volume in terms of the largest manufacturer in the world, chinese exports a lot more than we do we have a big trade deficit and then you have to peel that back. we are good at making complex

things. and how china has been able to compete mostly is by keeping labor costs low. they don't have independent unions and a lot of labor exportation and using any fracturing processes that the rest of the world would frown upon in terms of environmental pollution. direct subsidies from the chinese government to those firms that are so massive it makes our program look incredibly modest by comparison. in their is often times currency manipulation and have a closed market. when you put that together you can create a manufacturing powerhouse. how durable or sustainable is it? i don't know. it is showing signs of wear but china is to be looking inward and is not interested in having western companies there. they want to build up their own brands and serve their own markets. so we are at an inflection point, but i do think we can

have a brighter future in manufacturing. i think we hit rock bottom and people said we don't like it whether it was the job loss or supply chain disruptions or the need to build up capacity. they want to see a lot of this come back. host: chris, republican, texas. caller: thank you for taking my call. the pharmaceutical manufacturing come in my opinion it needs to come back to this country. it has to be that way. are we going to trust other countries that might be our enemy to make our pharmaceuticals? guest: this is a good point. we have seen this a couple of times. we have seen safety concerns with drugs that were manufactured from countries like china hitting the u.s. market and causing injury or death. the inspection system isn't as

robust. also supply availability and we saw supply chain disruptions that caused shortages of medicine during the pandemic. at other times as well. and the particularly with some active pharmaceutical ingredients that go into the manufactured products, there is in some cases a concentration so great that 90% or more of these apis are made in china or india raises questions about, is it good for any country to have a virtual monopoly over that type of production. we need to look to diversify that supply. this is something where the united states has cutting edge research and development. we have suitable manufacturing capability but we need to expand that and get that back wings

that were always made like antibiotics and things that we let go offshore. chris is absolutely right that is a huge concern. host: to fort lauderdale, florida, simon, independent. caller: the question that i have but i want to make a quick. i don't think the gentleman as being as candidate -- candid as he should. we have to spend quite a bit of money offering all types of subsidies to industries here in the united states. i am sure he will gladly concur. back to the government, we spend years hashing out trade benefits that benefit us. but now we are saying that the free market is not good and we

need to go back to protectionism and the taxpayers need to dig deeper to provide more subsidies of these companies because we are scared of the chinese. i'm going to ask the gentleman, is it not negative if we go into this protectionist for the american consumers not enjoying the benefits of adjustable -- more affordable goods. guest: i will respectfully disagree with simon on that. first of all, the investments we are making in our industries are seeing results. there is a factory construction boom in the united states that we haven't seen since the arsenal of democracy in world war ii and it is something to behold. it takes a while to build a

factory. it is not like a ramen noodle packet where you add water and get it. it takes three to four years and it started a couple of years ago and you will see a lot more factories opening. the u.s. market, even though you have been some different actions from the last administration to this administration, it is open and we have one of the lowest effective terror rates in the world and we have a massive trade deficit. we bring in way more products than we send it to the rest of the world. so the idea that the u.s. consumer isn't getting access to imports, we are the world's largest importer by a large margin. that's a little laughable but i do think we need balance in trade policy. the idea of the neoliberal do the d regulation, tax cuts and also do the free trade -- the

deregulation, tax cuts and free-trade. we are seeing a balance in both parties. from my perspective that is welcome. host: the color used the term "subsidies." investment in companies. is that the same thing? guest: there are some cases where there are direct subsidies but there are also loans and other things to try to build the industry's back up but they have to put skin in the game. here is the difference between what we do and what china does. we are doing this to build up our own domestic capacity so in the event of a blockade in the pacific that we are not going to end up short with respect to semiconductors and things like that. host: you are talking about taiwan? guest: yes.

that is different than china subsidizing to sell products to the rest of the world at bargain basement prices and drive all the other manufacturers out of business and take over the market, which is what they have done in steel and glass glass ad other industries as well. our version of this is simply trying to create economic security in the united states in a way we have not had for a while. the chinese version of this is disruptive to the rest of the world. guest: china makes more glass -- host: china mx. more glass than we do? guest: the largest glass company in the united states is a chinese company. that happened over the last 20 years. again a lot of subsidies in companies either destroy the u.s. competition and they've now set up shop in the united states but those profits are going back to beijing. host: ramona in georgia, you are

next. caller: good morning. i'm 62 and i remember when i was a teenager, i went to a dealership in 1980 and that's when they were making the compact cars. i was like why is this car so much money. they said the engine is from japan. i was so shocked. they have japanese engines in american cars? they said yes. i remember gerald ford going to china and made big deals about bringing more chinese whatever so we shot ourselves in our own feet.

we do it all the time. guest: the 1980's is when we first saw a lot of these imports, in from japan and then korea and the auto sector and we also saw a lot of changes in the u.s. industry that was frankly not a great time for the u.s. industry and that had a big impact on our production here. i think the policy we generally adopted is yes we import some cars, we welcome those companies from korea, from europe, from japan into our market, we've codified that through the usmca which is the free trade agreement with mexico and canada and we are also saying basically to china now you can be part of this because you're not playing by the rules. host: the bureau of labor

statistics putting that out looking at the previous month, that the august jobs report, total nonfarm play role -- payroll and plumbing increase of 432,000 in august. and the unemployed rate change little at 4.2% job gain occurred in industries of construction and health care. construction employment, health care was 31,000 in august. employment in manufacturing edging down in august down 24,000 jobs with the decline of 25,000 in durable goods industry employees have shown little change over the years through immediate reaction. -- your immediate reaction? guest: i'm not surprised. we are not expecting a good number. the manufacturing number. so sort of the overall number is probably a goldilocks number for

getting an interest rate cut. not too high, not too low. so it looks like we will get an interest rate cut which we desperately need. the fed should have done it before quite honestly. in manufacturing one of the challenges we've had is the world's selling out, it's not buying. we are having a lot of these competitive challenges and even though there's basically record construction in the united states, those factories are still being constructed. so we are at a point where the interest rate cut could really be beneficial spurring some capital investment in manufacturing to spur some more consumer incentives in the united states and it proves the point we've been saying all along that the federal reserve's action has had an outsized

impact and portions to manufacturing. i'm hopeful they will act decisively with a big rate cut. the next time they meet. >> later this month? guest: i think we are around two to three weeks away. host: keep calling in for scott paul of the alliance of manufacturing for good morning, you are next. caller: i wanted to ask what's the percentage of how much goods come from china that come into america and what's the percentage we sell them in goods. the second question, president trump we were making billions of dollars from china with the biden administration, is that still in effect and the third point is california something

said there can get people, which $32 an hour. what does that mean when you buy when they're paying wage right. eight dollars for hamburger it's going to be $15 for hamburger may be that. host: u.s. china trade deficit. guest: it's one of the most lopsided trade relationships in the world. put simply china sells us more than we sell to them, upwards of between two and $300 billion a year overall. and china has become an increasingly less important export market for us. the tariffs about an impact and brought down the trade deficit as we talked about for that circumvention it's gone through so you've seen those trade deficits.

on the tariffs -- the trump tariffs yes they are still in effect. biden has proposed raising some of them on goods. on chinese goods and he has enlisted the allies to do the same thing which differentiates him from trump in that respect. i do not think there is any appetite to reduce those right now. so i think that is a pretty durable policy. host: minimum wage increases impact. guest: i think it depends on industry and how labor-intensive it is. and what the market is around there, how much disposable income. i don't know, i think we have a lot of working poor in this country and from a federal perspective we haven't raise the minimum wage for a long time. this rarely comes into effect in manufacturing but those wages tend to be far and above the rest of the private sector pays

particular for people who don't have a college degree. i still think the problem in the united states is not the people aren't making enough it's that housing, other things, childcare are less attainable. host: are there other parts of the employment situation so -- of the report that you're interested in the you want me to read to you? guest: i think that's all good. every first friday we sit down as a team and look at it and we sometimes look at the different categories within manufacturing to see what the changes are, to see if there's anything that might've been a monthly bullet trade sometimes our planned -- their plant closures in dutch over the summer break. how do you figure -- factor that in? so we look at the subcategories in manufacturing at what's growing and if there's any trend

with the asterisk that one month alone doesn't necessarily tell the story because of some of those rates. >> if viewers want to do that it's no secret how to. the year bureau of labor statistics asked first available under manufacturing there some 15 or 16 different subcategories you can go through and see the change month over month, year-over-year. so that's what that chart looks like if you're looking around the bureau of labor statistics website for it. we will go to nelson in florida, republican, good morning. >> can you hear me ok? host: yes sir. caller: the chinese population thanks to their previous one child per family policy is now declining. i've read some things that indicates that the chinese economy is really going to

suffer in the not-too-distant future, i'm curious as to your opinion regarding the manufacturing wars between china and the united states taking into consideration that fact? thank you. guest: thank you that's a really great question. something we will be analyzing and looking at for decades to come. so it is true that population growth in china has slowed and because of demographic bubbles they are going to have a lot of potential challenges in the workforce. and so that is from a demographic perspective things are slowing down a little bit. the one thing that has not changed is kind of the bag of tricks the chinese communist party has for its economy.

ultimately what the party has decided on is not a path of economic reform, it is one of stability within china. so at various kinds of poles out real estate investments, or it pulls out infrastructure investments or even international infrastructure investments. and then, or manufacturing investments, doubling down on all of that. the problem with all of that, when china decides to juice its economy or boosting manufacturing we feel that. we feel that here, so that is something. the other big trend i want to say is it used to be the case the chinese government was welcoming in western companies like boeing, ford, gm. get the technology, apply it to their own companies, those companies could sell on the

market but that's no longer the case. these companies are being frozen out. we have, the days of western dominance in the chinese market are over. those brands are diminishing. all of that without exception. i think china is really interested in bolstering its own brand not only in china but getting them on the global stage as well and that something that concerns me because there's a different set of rules and economics and that can have profound impacts on our economy. host: this is to waiting in georgia, independent. go ahead. caller: good morning. when i was in high school you had to take civics in 11th and 12th grade and i was in 11th grade they were discussing john kennedy threatening general motors ford and chrysler for

left this country would put an import tax, he said if you unemployed americans you build your product elsewhere, when you bring your products back of a put an import tax on you. we have open trade, you may know the man jeffrey sachs. he was on tucker carlson's show the other night talking about how automation has declined employment demand and i wanted to just scream at that manned and tell him here in georgia we have a 1500 acre container area and 80% of those products coming in on containers used to be manufactured in the united states and when people do not meet our demands and other countries do we go into a recession. we have unemployment people. october 1993 you all probably remember well when clinton

signed nafta trade agreement, we lost almost -- i was working in lansing, michigan at the time and we lost probably 50% of our employment left and are whole motor plant went to mexico city and unemployed all those people. clinton told the uaw, they were all upset about the trade agreement. clinton, just hearsay, told the uaw don't worry about your membership because you will have greater membership with state, federal and teacher uaw members and 80% of the uaw now the membership is paid by the taxpayers. host: you bring up a lot and we'll have a minute or two left. guest: i wish i could package this answer on automation versus imports in terms of the jobs

impact because that was spot on. on nafta, that is still reverberating in politics today. there was an op-ed in the new york times in the last day or two talking about the continued ripple effect of nafta -- nafta on policies in michigan, pennsylvania and what have you, so i do agree that that had a profound effect on jobs and just your last point, there has been this reevaluation of what we call neoliberalism now which was free-trade deregulation, a light touch of government that both democrats and republicans supported for decades and through a lot of presidencies. and that has obviously changed through the last two administrations, they completely rejected neoliberalism. which was that clinton approach. i don't think there's any going back to it. i think we are charting a new course here. host: president of the alliance for american manufacturing.

online you can find the reports. we always appreciate you stopping by washington journal. guest: always a pleasure to be with you, your listeners and your viewers. host: jeremy con will join us talking about his book mastering ai for superpowered future. for the next 30 minutes, it is open forum. any public policy issue or political issue you want to talk about, of phone lines are yours. we will get to those calls right after the break. ♪ >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what's happening in washington live and on-demand. keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress. white house events, the courts,

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c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: time for our open forum many public policy issue you want to talk about prayer now's the time were return the program over to you. as your calling in, keeping you up to date on this from the washington times, it is from the shooting down in georgia. the father of that 14-year-old boy fatal shooting for people at the georgia high school wounding nine others. arrested on thursday and the father faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for let his son possess a weapon. according to the authorities it's the latest example of holding parents responsible for their children's actions in school shootings. the story notes in april michigan parents jennifer and james crumbley were first convicted in the u.s. mass shooting sense to lease 10 years

in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son's deteriorating mental health conditions before 21. that on your news channels today and this story getting a lot of headlines yesterday after news as well. hunter biden pleading guilty to federal tax charges yesterday heading off a trial expected to further china's -- further highlight his unflattering lifestyle. bidens attorney was at the courthouse and said the case -- they made the plea on behalf of hunter biden, the charges cover the maximum sentence of 17 years in prison and a maximum fine of more than $1 million.

sentencing scheduled for the case suit, or 16th about a month before president biden is set to leave office. that story in the wall street journal. with that is open forum. what is on your mind, let us know. we will start on the independent line in brownsburg, good morning. caller: appreciate you taking my call. i didn't think i was can get through. the gentleman who i think is from georgia one of -- you wanted was performed audiences out there and i wish we could get more town halls to get questions and answers. i think a lot of people feel uninformed, however you want to phrase it. host: we try to make a form here so people can ask questions and get answers. caller: i think we needed on a national level where we get the candidates and a former we can ask questions on different new

stations where you get pundits coming out getting their opinions instead of facts. i think we would be better off as a country getting facts over feelings so we can all be on the same page and understand where were going as a nation. >> to michigan this is jeffrey, line for democrats. caller: good morning. i just got the tail end of your last guest that you were interviewing and they were talking about clinton and nafta. if our member correctly at the very end of clinton's term, nafta was being passed and the republicans were taking over and they actually change the wording on president clinton's bill. i think that's where a lot of controversy people are

misunderstanding what actually really happened. thank you. host: that is jeffrey in michigan. was trying to pull up the clip in the c-span archives nafta negotiations as we go to eric in north palm beach florida. republican, good morning. caller: thank you. i enjoy watching you guys, it is excellent. my question is going to be about immigration. i'm troubled in one way, in a few ways, but there is this dueling back-and-forth between the republican party and the democratic party, the democrats claim -- well there was what they call a bipartisan immigration bill that the republicans rejected and they

pinned that on donald trump. contrary, and on the other side republicans -- did pass something called hr 2, which as i tried to learn about it is more restrictive and more comprehensive, it redefined asylum laws and did not allow entry in the first place and was more strict and rigid and that was blocked by the democrats in the senate. i wonder if this like a clarification if there hasn't been yet john or review of that on c-span, a special segment on that to really see with the nitty-gritty was in between those bills and how the republicans wanted to go more steps forward then --, the democrats pray it would put more people -- but i'm not sure if i'm clear on this distinctions between it or from right or

wrong, but some guests that could review that would be welcome as far as i'm concerned. host: always appreciate suggestions for future segments. this is in c-span archives from september 14 and we stop the video at the image but three former presidents joining bill clinton advice present out -- al gore that day as well. promoting the north american free-trade agreement, president clinton speaking that way and the need for great change and then following his remarks he signed nafta, the former president george bush -- george h. w. bush, jimmy carter and gerald ford that day in favor of nafta and there they are the white house. that was a time or the 14th of 1993 paid this is rudy in california, democrats, good

morning. caller: good morning, a few words for you this morning. decency, morals, respectability. a few nouns donald has no with -- no idea what they are about. what all of this is said and done, the people are really going to vote on personality, which donald does not have any. that could be the case for the election in november so everyone get ready for our first woman president, we will be happy. thank you very much. host: don in caliph -- south carolina, independent. caller: good morning. host: what's on your mind? caller: i was calling about harris, how she hasn't done an interview or press conference and trump is on there all day long, is she can do the same

thing when she's president question mark -- she's president? host: did she watch the dana bash? caller: yes but that's not live purchased and have to work every day if she's the president. i don't think she will be able to dodge as much. host: you think she will be president? caller: if it runs like it did last time. host: what does that mean? caller: i hope she's good to do more than what she's been doing. we've got a lot -- a whole lot of work to be done. host: that's don in south carolina. caller: -- samantha in new york, a democrats line. then we go to spokane. jane's in washington, republican. caller: hey, so i'm dennis been back to a topic you talked about

earlier. my observation is that the media is making money -- you know it's like the old press thing, if it bleeds, it leads. truth doesn't matter, you lead with the most outrageous thing you can for the day, right? then you get clicks and views and eyeballs. it seems like part of this is -- and back to steve, works for journalists great because you try to do an unbiased fair assessment of it, but people get so side loaded in their media bubbles that they are not willing to hear anything else and then that disintegration of

actual truth and the fact of something is -- it just makes everything a little bit blurry and i want to give props to you guys for trying to you know put forward a straight and honest without bias. it seems like a lot of the media , whatever cells is what they're going to do. thank you for your time. host: reading that op-ed at the beginning of the program, the publisher of the new york times with a 4000 word op-ed in the washington post. >> i saw that and i thought it was incredible. i saw your coverage of it. i didn't actually read it myself but i thought it was an incredible essay. guest: 4000 words -- host: 4000 words in the washington post.

in that piece saying he's not advising people how to vote, though he invokes donald trump's name more than 20 times in that op-ed. and, hair zero times. -- and kamala harris zero times. caller: it's not about republican or democrat, they take both sides and they will use anything to get more clicks and more cells and that's why like it because it's cutting to the chase, it's not about one particular opinion or one particular tribe. it's like what is the truth. and that's why i like the coverage of that. but if you look at any given media source across the web, across the internet is in order to sell papers they have to come

up with a headline and it just seems like that's a bit of a problem. host: another headline from an op-ed. the byline is robert f. kennedy, jr. and here's what he writes about former president. mr. trump is made reforming broken institutions a cornerstone of his political life. he is become the voice of countless americans who been let down by our elites if he can unite the country but making it a priority to make america healthy again laying out a few ideas on that front including leveling the playing field for americans internationally on drug costs to ensure that americans won't pay substantially more than europeans pay for their drugs. allowing the fishy areas supplemental nutritionists and food stamps to use their food stamps to buy processed foods

say 90% of all snap funding goes to suites and drinks. and research posit -- budgets toward preventative alternative and holistic approaches to health saying in the current system researchers don't have enough incentive for generic drugs and root cause therapy, that's looking at things like diet, rfk junior with several other suggestions as well. this is robert in new hampshire, independent, good morning from the granite state. caller: this is ronald new hampshire. i have a particular story, freedom of speech in general not just freedom of press, but freedom of press -- a speech in general has been eroded. i've a particular story that has been completely censored by the press, but before i get to that,

it's been, i have not been able to get into c-span since june 4 and the reason why i haven't been able to get in is because i tried calling in on july 11 when al green was on and the host, and this has happened more than once to me, the host chewed up my call early -- cute up my call early in the may talked about some stuff, you know how right before you go to air to push the button and the tone and you go online, the host did that early and so i was hanging there for a few minutes and then they hung up on me. host: i only have a few minutes so what did you want to talk about then? caller: just to let you guys know and give you a heads up that you guys are censoring stuff ok. host: we try not to censor stuff and we have to give a lot of people a chance to talk about so what do you want to talk about. caller: if you can give me some

time since i haven't been able to call and since june. the story i want to talk about is covid. one million americans were killed by their own leaders during the pandemic, and nobody has covered that. nobody's talking about that. host: there weren't stories about covid? caller: not on the fact that our own leadership have killed their own citizens. the u.s. has killed one million of their own citizens. throughout the pandemic they made the decision that they knew would make the pandemic worse yet they made those decisions anyway. n95 masks, still half the people do not know they need to wear n95 masks. they had n95 masks sitting on the shelves, 700 million n95 masks were sitting on the shelves during the pandemic and they did not, finally army had to go in there and physically

take them off the shelves and distribute them. i heard that on c-span but i haven't heard that anywhere else. that story is been completely censored. why is that? why was that story censored? host: this is bill in spring hill, florida, good morning. caller: first of all that last caller about the masks, i got vaccinated, i never had a problem. if he gets vaccinated he won't have a problem. i really want to get on something else though. let's talk about the biden administration the last four years. everything that he did. afghanistan, prices going through the roof. the border, everything you can think of. now the guy try to get kamala harris in there. if she becomes president, the eastern world is going to look at us as weak, especially china and russia. a woman president? we are good have nothing but problems over there. we already have problems.

biden has depleted our and him -- our ammo, he left all the weapons in afghanistan. he could've brought those weapons home and they could have been sent to ukraine instead of spending millions more for weapons. the whole way to manage stuff is totally out of control. we need some men in there that think straight, that have some common sense. >> you don't ever want to see a woman president? caller: no i'm not saying that, but i don't think it's the time right now to have a woman president because of these european and neat -- nations, they consider a woman subservient in those nations. i would've loved to have what's her name, there's a lot of other women that are more qualified than kamala harris. host: who's a woman you would want to see president? caller: condoleezza rice.

who else, there's so many of them really smart people, that this woman here is totally out of control. what i would like to know is she smiling all the time, how much valium is she taking every day. host: dennis in highland, texas. europe. >> i just want to say voter publican, a vote for trump. have a good day. host: robert you are up next. caller: i'm 73 years old. i am american and i am black and i'm voting for donald trump. i'm not voting to break any glass ceilings, i'm not voting for race, i'm not voting for gender, i'm voting for common sense. she was in charge of the border, what did she do. we have people flooding into this country, it's an invasion of our borders and how black

americans need to wake up and realize that they are being replaced as a voting block by all of these illegal immigrants coming in and they're giving them health care, they are giving them debit cards, 2000, $3000. our veterans are on welfare or whatever, they are homeless, they do not get any help. it's amazing veterans who have taken care of this country, they fought for this country, many have died and yet these immigrants are coming in and now she wants to give $25,000 to new homeowners? who's paying for that. the american taxpayers are paying for that. we cannot handle four more years of an obama, biden and now harris. we cannot survive it. it's loud or blatant or whatever, but he's got common sense.

he's a businessman. he knows and he loves this country. he knows how to get us to the next level. host: former president trump was at the economic club of new york yesterday. we aired it c-span talking about policies. here's about a minute of that yesterday. [video clip] >> i'm pledging today in my second term we will eliminate a minimum of 10 fold regulate -- 10 regulations for everyone new regulation. we will be able to do that quite easily. instead of attacking industries as usual we will embrace them including making america the world capital for crypto and bitcoin. fourth, at the suggestion of elon musk, who has given me his complete and total endorsement, that's nice. smart guy. he knows what he's doing.

very much appreciated. i will credit government efficiency can fish -- efficient task of conducting a performing deck performance audit of the federal government, making recommendations for drastic reforms. we need to do it. we can go on the way we are now. and elon, because he's not very busy has agreed to head that task force. it would be interesting. if the ad the time, good one to do it but he's agreed to do it. host: former president trump yesterday from new york. if you want to watch that you can do so on our website at c-span.org. speaking of appearances yesterday, it was second john doug emhoff talking about the election, talking about kamala harris, here's a bit of that appearance. [video clip] >> what was your reaction when

your wife turned black, were you surprised? [laughter] >> you know, all that stuff, it is a distraction though. we can joke about it, but it's literally a distraction. all the things coming at her, coming in me and our families, it's really just a distraction from other trying to do. >> the supreme court has ruled the president has immunity, can do pretty much what the president wants to do. as her husband is that where you at all? [laughter] >> once she gets elected, as she's preparing for the debates, somebody asked me what's it like debating her, i said i've never won once. and so i'm looking forward to this. host: doug emhoff on jimmy

kimmel live. two minutes here in our open forum. jean is waiting in detroit, michigan. democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. i want to say something in all the stuff that's going on, i wonder where is god in this? we are professing to be a christian nation, to the point our congress opens up in prayer, we want to put 10 to minutes into the schools. half the country promotes a man whose words and actions are in direct conflict with the word of god. as christians we are supposed to love and compassion, forgiveness and for peace. and the man who is running for president does none of these things. i grew up at a time where everything was closed on sunday. so we went to sunday school and

church. and came home and then had big dinners with family or friends. and one of the main things that happened within this country with school shootings in every thing else is the lack of really connection with people, with god first of all. because we are disconnected and we do not have the love for one another but we had back then. there were no mass school shootings in a most 200 years of this country except for the outlaws in the old west. but i just feel we need to restore to honor god, chick-fil-a is doing fine closed on sunday and their expanding and multiplying. we need to once again love one another. thank you. >> a couple minutes left here.

i wanted to note some programming later today when it comes to the former and current president. former president tmpill be speaking to the press frotrp tower new york city today we will have live coverage at noon eastern on c-spa c-span.org and the free c-span a video app. president biden travels to michigan to speak about the u.s. economy and his and his rations jobs creation coming on a day -- the august jobs report was released. we will have live coverage of that on c-span, c-span.org and the free c-span now app. did want to note commercial space development will be talked about at george washington university, the faa will discuss how commercial space develop it will boost the economy, don't forget about that. that's coming up in about 45 minutes on c-span.

stick around after this program. this is kathy in columbia, missouri. thanks for waiting. caller: hello. talking about freedom of the press and i'm so happy that topic came up. seeing the article from the washington post. i have not read it but the reason i was so glad it came up was i think it's been about a year ago the several members of the freedom caucus in the congress had just held a news conference and basically vilified the press. i watch on c-span. 44 minutes long as i recall. but they said that they were -- they put together resolution, something like 40 signatures of various members of the house of representatives and on the

republican side. i think a lot of the press, not all of the press issues, but there seems to be an outside attack by some members of the republican party. and i was shocked at the times, nobody talked about that press conference that was held and i found it very shocking. host: our last caller and that seckman. 45 and its left this morning. in that time we will be joined by the fortune magazine ai editor to talk about his new book mastering ai, survival guide to our superpowered future. we will have that discussion on the other side of the break. ♪ >> watch the abc news presidential debate simulcast

live tuesday on c-span two as the candidates go head-to-head in their first debate since securing their party's nomination. coverage begins with a preview show at 8:00 p.m. followed by the debate at 9:00 eastern. the abc news presidential debate simulcast live tuesday on c-span two. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. partnered by cable. >> american history tv, saturday on c-span two exploring the people and events that tell the american story. watch american history tv's new series historic presidential elections, exploring what makes these elections historic. the pivotal issues in different eras and their lasting impact on the nation. vice president thomas jefferson of the democratic republican party defeated federalist party

candidate and incumbent president john adams in a contest that had to be decided by the u.s. house of representatives. then at 8:00 eastern, ohio state university history professor jeffries on the historical narrative of the civil rights movement and modern understanding of victory, defeats and what the movement was trying to achieve. professor jeffries is the brother of house democratic leader hakeem jeffries. at 9:30 p.m. eastern actor dennis quaid portrays ronald reagan in the film reagan and headlines the cast discussion about the movie. the former president stories told to the eyes of the kgb agent and based on the real-life surveillance of ronald reagan. exploring the american story, watch american history tv saturday on c-span two and find a full schedule on your program guide. or watch online anytime c-span.org/history.

>> the house will be in order. >> c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979 we've been your primary source for capitol hill providing balanced unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where the policy is debated and decided all with the support of america's cable company. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: joining us is jeremy kohn, the ai editor at fortune magazine and author of the new book mastering ai, survival guide to our superpowered future. explain what the term the singularity means? guest: it refers to the moment when computers or software surpass human intelligence,

that's often the definition given some other people give a definition that it's the moment human sort of merge somehow with machines, those of the two definitions usually given on the singularity. host: what's the definition you use and how far away are we from the singularity. >> i think we are still a ways away from that moment. although ai technology is getting very powerful and useful. i think we are still at least a decade if not more away from that kind of single party moment but it's a good time to start thinking about some of the implications of that moment. but i think we are still a ways off. host: what we need to think about lethal -- legally, what we do in that time? guest: there's a lot we should be thinking about in terms of how we can mitigate some of the risks that might come about from that kind of superpowerful ai, but a lot of the book concentrates on what we should do to mitigate this here and now

with the ai technology we currently have which is rapidly being rolled out and governments are using it and i think consumers of course are using it and i think there risks there we should address and at the same time were thinking about some these longer-term risks. the risks right now i think we should be looking at and some of them have gotten some attention and some haven't gotten enough attention but they would include in the political realm accelerated and sort of expanded disinformation campaigns, a kind of crisis of authenticity in general across media because of the amount of synthetic content that can produced. in the way that may warp various search engines algorithms and other things we may be ingesting more synthetic content without realizing it. what we read may be influenced by that. but i'm also worried about some of the risks that are more subtle that they use ai

technology is a vital human cognitive ability. our ability to write, to think critically, our memory may be imperiled to some extent. we've gotten reliant on the use of ai technology can provide a summarized answers. this can be a tendency not to go out and think too hard. and worry about that. i think there's a risk to our social relations with other people. i thing we all start lying on ai chat boxes and companions and people asserting to do. so there's risk there. there's some risk i think the pending on how businesses deploy the technology to sort of what happens in terms of employment and also in terms of income inequality. i am more optimistic in those areas, the risk we will see mass unemployment is pretty remote. i think this technology will create more jobs than it takes away. i think we use this technology right there is a chance to really enhance the ability and

create a productivity boom that would be great for the economy and there's a chance to level people up, rescale people and move them back with the help of this technology. if used correctly and deployed correctly there really is a chance for this technology to be an equalizer. if we naively go down a path where we don't take those steps, technology could very well see increasing inequality. i think those are the risks with technology as it exists now. some of the risks they get a lot of attention about ai potentially becoming senti and or developing some kind of agency of its own. those sci-fi scenarios are still a long way off. but they are getting ever so closer. getting some amount of time and effort heading them off paid i don't think we want to distract from the addressing of the near-term risk. host: why do you call it a

survival guide question mark by put it in those terms? guest: i do think this is a technology that's very general-purpose and when the first technologies that really challenges what humans think is unique about humanity which is our intelligence and cognitive ability. here you have the technology software the challenges that. i think that is disruptive and i think you might want to think about how, what we do to preserve humanity in a world where you have technology such as that and there's a remote possibility those other greater risks down the road and we should be thinking about and take some steps to mitigate. if you look at how this is being deployed in a military context there's some very big risks there. that we should be thinking hard about. do we really want to go down that road and if so what controls do we need in place. there are definitely things where i think this poses a threat where people should think

about what else can i do to survive. but the full title is a survival guide to our superpowered feature and i do think used correctly this technology can grant a superpowers and really be transformative for science, for health and medicine, for drug discovery also in education where there's been a lot about chatbot's and things like chatgpt which came out in late 2022. i think that technology has the potential to be a huge positive for education. host: the book, mastering ai, survival guide to our superpowered future. taking your phone calls as we have this discussion, a phone line split as usual regionally. 202-748-8000 in eastern or central time zones. 202-748-8001 if you are in the mountains or pacific time zone.

jemy con as folks are calling in, page 37 of your book, previously superpowerful technological leaps, nuclear weapons, satellites and supercomputers were most often developed or at least funded by govemes. the most is usually streg any military or geopolitical vantage not financial. governments although often secretive were subject to some form of public accountability in contrast, the way they develop artificial and general intelligence left with a handful of powerful technology companies, what does that mean for us? guest: it means we start to take some steps to think about how we can hold those companies that are developing this technology to account. i think government needs to step in and bring in some rules around the employment of the technology. we should not allow private corporations to develop in a complete vacuum and academy -- and give them a blank check.

we are can and need some regulation around this. i also think we have to think about other ways of having leverage towards these companies which would include some of the agency we have as consumers, we don't have to necessarily buy what they are selling in the form we are selling it and we can use our power of the purse to have some influence on how the technologies developed. we also have the agency has some employees starting to think about how they will use ai technology to try and encourage the companies we work for and if you're someone in management to actually deploy the technology in a responsible way and deploy it as a comp woman to human labor and not think of it as a substitute for human labor. a lot of the risks i worry about in the book, about from the idea of the framing of the technology as a direct substitute for human cognitive abilities. and this technology works best in a complement to human

cognitive skills. there are things humans will always be better at including a lot of the interpersonal skills that are important for this environment. in this technology can give us a huge boost, it can act as a copilot but we want copilots not auto pilots. host: what's the origin story of the ai technology that folks are most familiar with, chatgpt. guest: that came from a company that's now was well known but used to be fairly obscure called openai. it began life as a nonprofit founded in part elon musk is one of the cofounders. he brought together a bunch of people from silicon valley, the current ceo sam altman, greg brockman, they came together with the top ai researchers from places like google and they were founded in opposition to google. they were founded because elon

and some of the other folks were afraid google was racing ahead with ai technology and they would dominate with the superpowerful ai and this power would be concentrated in the hands of a single corporation and they thought that was a bad idea and was dangerous. so they wanted to create something that would be a counterbalance, particular to this entity called deep mind which was based in the u.k.. they were based here in london, they seemed at the time to be racing ahead in the developing of ai technology and it appeared google would just dominate the landscape so openai was founded in opposition to that and was supposed to be everything google and deep mind were not. google was this giant for-profit corporation, openai was initially founded as a nonprofit. deep mind was seen as secretive, openai was initially committed to making all of its openai

models completely open for other people to use. what happened subsequently is it turned out it took a lot more money to develop these very powerful ai models and i think elon and sam altman that -- then they anticipated. there was some debate about raising money and elon musk at one point wanted to take the nonprofit on completely himself and merge it into his other companies like tesla, but the other cofounders of the company did not want to do that so they needed to come up with another option. and that option was to create a for-profit entity that would still be in control by the nonprofit board but the for-profit entity would be able to have extra capital funding. -- they did that, and then in 2019, they got a large investment from microsoft, a billion-dollar investment to help build the computing infrastructure they needed to start tilting out powerful ai systems.

in particular, openai became interested in large language models, ai models that inject tons of text from the internet. the largest ones are trained on almost the entire internet worth of text, but the early models were trained on a lot and they could not do as much but openai started playing around with these and they showed great promise in being able to complete lots of tasks. they did not do one skill but lots of skills. they were a swiss army knife of language processing, and this made them attractive, and people started getting interested in these, and openai developed these largely which models, but they were rolling them out to ai developers mostly for free. they started having a few products that they charged people for, and then in late november 2022, they suddenly strolled out chatgtp and made it

available for free to play with and that is a chatbot we are familiar with today, and it looked a little bit like the search bar on a google search, you could ask anything in it could do all sorts of things, give you different responses, summarize your meeting in haiku, write code and music, pretty impressive, and that really kicked off the current generative ai and the current race towards the ai that we are still in the middle of today. host: what is the difference versus ai and gi? caller: it ai -- guest: ai mimics cognitive reasoning as opposed to being explicitly programmed. e.g. i refers to an ai system that would be as intelligent as the average person and it could do all of the cognitive tasks that a person could do, and that have been the goal of computer

science since the foundation of the field back in the middle of the 20th century, but it has always been seen as this kind of point on the horizon that was a long way off. and a lot of people felt we could never create a system that could do this but it was a worthy goal for the field. what has happened over time as we have gotten closer and closer to those who can seemingly imitate more aspects of our cognitive ability. we are still a long way off on a system that is as capable as the average person, but it seems we are getting closer. host: plenty of calls for you, jeremy kahn. in california comic angela -- angela in california, go ahead. caller: i wanted to ask your guest, back in 1997, i'm in the insurance company, my company had me sit down with guys from google to come up with a computer program for workers comp insurance.

they told me -- i noticed i had a friend from jbl, and total recall came out 30 years ago, and robots had the a1 capability in those movies, so it seems like the capability has been around since 1997. how advanced is the army with this? is the avatar movie showing us with the army capability is? my friends at jpl told me to start looking at the movies because they are telling me the future of ai. can you answer that question? guest: a lot of people have this idea on how the military has secretly more advanced ai models than what we know have been developed commercially. i would be a little skeptical.

i think actually this is a case where the private companies have pulled ahead to where the government is, and part of it has to do with the amount of money involved in the training infrastructure, and the veracity it takes to train these models would be hard to hide and requires a large, his goal location somewhere. we might have an inkling that they are working on this. i also don't think there is any reason if the government developed this to keep it secret. it would not make sense to keep it under wraps, so this is a case where the private industry is probably very ahead of where the public government is, and where the government is trying to play catch-up, there are proposals the biden administration has in some kind of public of the infrastructure that can train a model that would be available to university researchers and other members of republican institutions so that

they would not be dependent on what was only available from corporations, and corporations, you have to pay to use this or depend on them that they're willing to let people use it for free. in terms of whether they are pointing to the direction of where we may be headed in sci-fi , sci-fi has in the past been an interesting way of thinking about the future and where things might be heading. there is an interest in interplay between the people working on developing the technology and science fiction. it is called a neuro-network, a kind of ai system loosely based on the human brain. in particular, there is a transformer that is behind most of the recent advances in ai, and transformers come about because researchers at google had seen the movie "arrival" and are interested in the way that the aliens in the movie

communicated and processed language seemed to process leg which, and they thought there was an interesting idea about the parallel processing of language in the movie, could be create an ai model that would process it in the same way one algorithm that would work sort of like it seemed like the aliens processed language in that movie? that is how they initially came up with the idea of the transformer, which has been the thing that has kicked off generative ai boom and empowers chatgtp and pretty much every other ai system that has been debuted in the last few years, so there is an interesting play between fiction and development with ai. it is worth looking at and thinking about the narratives of how the technology might play out in the future. it is definitely interesting. it is where the thought experiment in the playoff scenario is to look at what

science fiction authors have thought of in the past, but i don't think you should confuse sci-fi with reality just because someone is positive this could be a future that might come about with this technology does not mean that it is the future that will come about and it does not mean that governments have already developed systems that are like the ones you see in sci-fi movies. host: las vegas, eric. good morning. thank you for waiting. caller: i tell you, so many different things, i wish we could talk for a couple of hours. [indiscernible] black budgets are there for a reason for us not to know, but if you talk about the singularity, and i definitely have had long discussions with my chatgtp about my tendency, and those are great discussions,

and it is difficult for me to not start looking at that tool like it has feelings because it seems like it does in that matter, and it is very difficult for me to not start to connect to some kind of bond with a machine. other than that, about the similarity -- host: let me talk about that and part of what jeremy kahn writes about. on this tendency to be like humans? guest: there is a tendency and it is one of the reasons i'm concerned about the use of chatbot's by people to be companions. there are companies out there marketing them as you should use this as a friend or sounding

board and do something to unload your feelings and thoughts to at the end of the day, and i think that is slightly disturbing, that trend. i think we should be a little worried about it because i think there will be a tendency for people to look at these as if they are human beings. that is what we tend to do. particularly chatbot's, and i write in the book about what is called allies affect, named -- eliza affects, named around the first chatbot developed in the 1960's, named after eliza doolittle, but eliza, the chatbot, had this amazing effect on people that it was trained to act as a psychotherapist, and the creator of it shows that persona for the chatbot in part because if you asked a question, it might respond with another question. that was a good way for it to cover up the fact that it did not have good leg which understanding.

but it could give you the impression that it was responding to what you asked it, and it was such a powerful effect that even people who knew they were interacting with the software and that it was not a real therapist or person, started confessing things to the chatbot. it was hard for them to actually suspend their own belief in this case, so they were so credulous of the idea that it was the person, that even these other computer scientists who knew well it was not a person, found themselves confessing things to it almost against their will or better judgment, so this was named the allies affect, the tendency for people to ascribe humanlike characteristics to software chatbot's. today with chatgtp, which has a higher level of seeming understanding of language, it can make understanding much better than eliza and it is an

even more dangerous situation because many people will say it is like speaking to your friend and maybe even better because it seems so nice and apathetic. in the book, i tried to say, look, it does not have real empathy. real empathy is a human trait that comes from lived experience, and these chatbot's have no lived experience, so if they can imitate empathy, it will never be real. we need to draw a bright line between the real and inauthentic . i worry that people are going to use ai chat bots as companions. there was already a group of people who uses them for erotic role-play and romantic relationships and that is dangerous. i think people will use it as an emotional clutch, a social clutch, and they will not go out and interact with real people. i think that is a real danger, and i think the companies that are designing it and rolling out these chatbot's, particularly if you have children or teenagers

using the, that it should be a control on how long they should interact with them and that they should encourage users to get out and talk to real people and they should keep reminding the user that they are not a real person, despite their leg which abilities which seem humanlike. i think there is a danger that we have to fight against, and we should try to take design decisions and push the companies that are creating the chatbot's to take design decisions that try to always set the framing such that we know we are interacting with a chatbot and not a person, and it encourages us to go out and have real human relationships. host: what is their touring test? guest: it is a test that alan turing, an early computer scientists, affectation, came up with. that was the idea that the test of intelligence or a machine,

you could have an observer who would read dialogue taking place between a human and machine but not be able to know which is which, and if they could read the dialogue from the two discussions in the conversation, that the human who was supposed to judge this would not be able to tell which comments were written by the human and which were written by the machine so that is the turing test. i write in the book about the negative impact it has had on the framing of ai because that has become one of the big tests their intervening decades. and couldn't observer not know that the dialogue was written by a machine? with chatgtp, we are there now, and with the latest models from other companies, as well, like google. or from meta, all with powerful

models, that you could read a lot of what the right and not be able to tell it was written by ai software. but the problem is it sets up a scenario, and there are two problems, one, is scenario where we are always framing this as an verses machine, and it is when a machine can do exactly what the human can do, mimic what the human can do, and it frames everything as a machine and exact substitute or software for the human. again, i think a lot of the problems with the technology come from that framing. if we can think of this as a compliment to humans as a copilot, and aid, an assistant, we will be in a lot better shape and we can actually sidestep the risks the technology presents

today just by the reframing, but it immediately puts you in the framework where the machine can substitute directly for the person because it can mimic what the person can do so well. around the idea of mimicry, there is also the idea of deception, so the turing test is a sound deceiving the perceiver, and i think there is something ethically challenging about putting deception at the core of what we are saying in the test of intelligence. i think that is a mistake, and i think computer scientists are better off and we all are, if that test went away. if we did not have the idea of deception at the core of how we are judging intelligence in software. host: the book, “mastering ai: a survival guide to our superpowered future," the author, jeremy kahn, joining us from oxford, england. dave, new york. good morning. caller: good morning. great topic and discussion.

my main question is about the applications, but you guys write me off track with this science-fiction discussion. i think one of the terms was coined by a science-fiction author, and you had guys like gibson who came up. they used terms like cyberspace and predicted the internet, so science-fiction is interesting. it definitely has led to interesting ideas, but to get back to the question, i think that the ai technology is not that far, but we are far away from this being a big problem in society. it is definitely heading that way. the bottleneck with ai i think is processing, so when you get the processing power, tings will change a lot, but i don't think

we're that close. my main concern is military application because if you look at the military, the space program, it is funded at military, and i guarantee ai and surveillance is funded by the military. these are the things that were me the most. and for sure china has definitely enabled a lot of energy and resources into developing ai and military applications. to be honest, we are in an arms race right now with china in ai. i'm curious what you have to say. thank you and bye. guest: there are concerning military applications of ai. and there are worrying concerns around surveillance and how ai can empower a surveillance state and empower authoritarian

regimes that would like to do my surveillance. china has a very effective system of mass surveillance in place across the country, and that would not be possible without some ai models. that does not mean they have anything like artificial intelligence. some of the ai models effective at surveillance are fairly small ai models compared to like the language -- large leg which models that power chatgtp because they only have to recognize faces and video images, and they are good at that, and they can track people across a network of cctv cameras, and that is a use of ai that is here today that we should be concerned about. where i'm concerned about military applications, there are several. one is i think we should be concerned about small drones with thomas targeted capability, where they could be assassination bots because that is very potentially destabilizing.

which i think we are getting close to being able to do, but you could modify commercial drone with software that could recognize individual basis and target individual people, the ultimate terry west robin -- terrorist weapon. i think we should have some kind of limits on this technology and the proliferation of this technology. what has happened so far is there has been an attempt by the un to get an absolute ban on these systems of any size with autonomous targeting capabilities. the problem is that states, including the united states, have locked progress so far on any sort of ban. and what i say in the book is i think it may be time to move away from an absolute ban and start using an arms-control mindset and thinking about are there certain kinds of these ai

systems that we can get all the great powers to agree to place limits around? at some of these smaller systems that could be used as a fascination bot might be one where china, u.s., and the other p5 nations can see it in their interest to limit the spread of such technology because it would be destabilizing to all the powers, and that is a case where you might be able to make progress on arms-control. i think there might be others on larger weapon platforms where the u.s., china, and russia could agree to have some imitations put in place for mutual benefit, but, yeah, the other area where ai has been used, and those are on decision-support, recommending strategies, or tactics down to the unit levels, there are strategies at the higher level, and i think there is great potential with everybody working on that. i think there is potentially

some great consequences there if we do not get it right. we are already starting to see in ukraine and gaza where there have been targeting systems deployed that keep you in the loop, so the ai recommends the target to be struck, and human intelligence officers are supposed to review that and sign off, but some cases have reported, particularly out of israel, that where some israeli intelligence officers have told journalists anonymously that they have not only targeting recommendations from ai, but for them to really do the checks, they get a recommendation but they don't have much idea about why the ai system recommended the target, and they felt they were in a position where they were rubberstamping with the ai system was turning out. i think that is potentially a dangerous situation. international law says that

humanitarian law says military commanders must continue to exercise meaningful control over the weapon systems they deploy, and i think there is a big question there about what that means. lots of questions there. in the arms race with china, yes, we are pushing ahead on ai planning capabilities, but china has enacted a strict domestic regulation around consumer use of ai than the united states has. people often used china as a bogeyman for why the united states may not create ai galatian or enact ai regulation -- regulation or enact it, and china actually has much stricter commercial ai regulation than the u.s. does. just because the u.s. might restrict commercial development from ai is not necessarily restrict the u.s. military from pushing ahead on certain capabilities. i think we need to separate out military and civilian uses and

not allow what we feel our national security priorities to prevent us from enacting sensible civilian regulations. host: d on x pass this question, write yo cpanies are already abusing ai, using it to exploit drivers and riders. so what is your concern about bad commercial civilian actors like uber? guest: i'm very concerned about certain business models that might deployed by companies developing ai systems, including chatbot's and personal assistance. i'm concerned we will go down a path that we might be seen with social media were some of the ai apps will use an engagement based business model, where they try to keep people on the app, using psychological tricks to do so, and i don't think that is the right model. i worry about that because one

of the social chatbot's, people -- there will be a tendency to keep them on there as long as possible with the exclusion of real human contact. the other thing i worry about is in those business models is something around advertising business models where there might not be enough transparency about who has paid for you to be served a certain contact, and we are going to move quickly in the next two years to a world of ai assistance that will go out and do things for us on the internet and use other software on our behalf, and it will do things like book are vacations and restaurant reservations, and shop for us, and when you have an ai agent act on your behalf, you would like it to do the things that would actually conform to your wishes, and your own preferences. you do not want -- for example, shoes, if i tell my ai agent that i wanted to buy a new

hiking boots, i would like it to buy the pair that will be right for me and the style of hiking i do and the trip i take, i do not want them to recommend the nike hiking boots because nike paid openai a lot of money to recommend those services. or at the least, i would like complete transparency if the ai agent says i found a great pair of nike boots that it is recommending that pair because of nike paying something to have that recommended and not because that really is the best thing necessarily for my hiking style or where i'm going. i worry about that. i think this is a case where the ftc could take action and really try to restrict the business models that the companies use or manage that there be transparency around any sort of pay for serving you some kind of content or recommendations. and i worry very much about those business models. host: we will take viewers who stick around on c-span over to a

discussion with government officials from nasa, the commerce department, the faa about the commercialization of safe, what it means for the economy, and before we do that, jeremy kahn, what role do you see ai playing in those big issues? guest: well, ai is extremely important for space exploration, and we will not get to mars or the moon without ai systems helping guide there was space ships, but luckily, i think one of the interests in the organization, i talk about this, but, they put a lot of thought into how humans interact with ai systems. and they have some interesting weapons on the best way to present information from an ai system to humans and really lessons that every business as they deploy ai should learn. i talk about some in the book. they include having explanations for why nai recommends certain things to the person -- why ai

recommend certain things to the person because it increases trust and people are more likely to follow recommendations when they understand the rationale behind it. if you have a system that recommends with no explanation, that is difficult and people turn not to trust it and do not follow the recommendation in many cases. so there is lots of overlap. host: johnson in -- john has been waiting in new jersey, thank you. caller: interesting conversation. i have added your book to my to purchase. guest: thank you. caller: at the top of my list. this is great. i can remember when the birth of virtual reality came out, starting the oculus rift and they were talking about the effects on the brain, people could not keep their glasses on

for longer than five minutes without getting severe headaches. these are all large liquids models. that is basically what we are talking about, where the equality robot or whatever, it is about human manipulation in thought and action. i also read, professor, "physics of the future." it was a flawed getting through the first 65 pages -- plod get into the first 65 pages of algorithms, but i noticed that it comes down to, well, it can come down to when it comes to science fiction that nobody is saying that those so-called this stupid futures -- this is toby and futures are out of the realm of possibility and that

everything you said means we have to keep an eye on what we are doing. but once you start talking about monetization and profiting, it gets difficult. by the way, i listened to a show called "off the hook" on chatgtp, and these are old guys who work in variousthey proved . they call it. there is so much to talk about. x: a lot there. guest: you product good points. certainly chatgpt can lie. all these large lang which model systems, they can do what they call hallucinate.

it's when an ai system tells you something confidently that is not true. right now we have no real solution to this hallucination. we have to be careful how we use ai chatbot and ai systems. there are ways to curtail it to some degree. you may get the systems to work reasonably well. it's another reason why i think -- i'm optimistic about the deployment of ai and a lot of companies. -- in a lot of companies. if you start thinking about some thing that is going to help people, you still need the human in the loop because the ai system is not yet good enough to give you a 100% accurate answer all the time. you need that person checking the answer. you avoid any scenarios of mass unemployment and you can reap the benefits of the technology. if we deploy this correctly with the right guardrails and think

about the design of the systems, there is a chance to expand human potential and have a lot of positive transformational effects. if we don't do those things, i am worried. there are downside and risks and that's why we need to take action now to place guardrails around the technology, have sensible regulation, and think about design choices. if we can create a world will be keep humanity at the center of it and keep human empathy at the core of what we do and avoid some of the real risks of the technology otherwise entails. host: "mastering ai: a survival guide to our superpowered future." ai editor at fortune magazine. we appreciate your time this morning. guest: thanks very much. host: that will do it for us on the washington journal today. we are back here tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 a.m. pacific.

reviewers who stick around on c-span, we take you over to a briefing with officials from nasa, the commerce department and the faa to discuss the commercialization of space and how it could boost the u.s. economy. that's hosted by the george washington university space policy institute. live coverage on c-span. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [crowd talking]