Transcript
Zain
0:02
This is a strategist episode 1055. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, let's
Zain
0:09
let's not talk about the arena because we
Zain
0:13
we are talking about everything but the arena. You
Zain
0:16
You guys have had all the time in the world to talk about the arena.
Corey
0:18
arena. Yeah, we talked about
Zain
0:18
about the arena. I heard you talk about the
Zain
0:21
I've never seen you tweet about the arena. I liked her tweet about the arena. I thought it was very, very
Zain
0:27
very helpful. It was a little on the nose for my taste. So
Corey
0:29
So we talked about it on our Patreon I know
Zain
0:32
know you did I'm trying to push it Oh my god man
Zain
0:38
I'm in god mode here Carter And I don't think you understand Well you're an atheist so you wouldn't understand But this is me in god mode Just trying to help the pod Even if I'm not on it Two
Zain
0:48
Two out of three times
Carter
0:51
never been more angry than that pod Except maybe the time when I won The argument about
Zain
0:57
you came out against
Zain
0:58
children children someone should tell annalise that the host does not get to have opinions on this show oh
Carter
1:03
who's that gonna be zane who's that gonna be not
Carter
1:07
obviously not you yeah
Zain
1:09
yeah no no if she wants to have opinions she can weave them in through a very long uh preamble and then a subsequent post-amble uh she should fucking learn the ways of the show yeah yeah
Corey
1:22
yeah you that's how you you keep the authenticity and the integrity of the show right that's how i do
Zain
1:28
i've done it masterfully for you have you're amazing 100 1055 episodes sans however many uh carter you're doing well otherwise uh do i need to check in on you uh on this on this fine thursday evening no
Carter
1:39
no i mean i obviously have lost my mind about all the election stuff but i'm okay i mean uh you know i calmed down after the arena announcement and i think i'm pretty pretty
Carter
1:50
pretty level-headed right now thanks Thanks for checking in, though, Zane. It has been tumultuous.
Zain
1:54
It is a distinct pleasure. Corey Hogan, anything we need to talk about before we get going?
Zain
1:59
He won't stop talking about
Carter
2:01
AFL stuff. Oh, my God. This is a great week for me. I have made selections. I'm quite certain I'm going to go nine for nine. And then I also did a little bit of reading up on the new potential stadium in Tasmania.
Carter
2:14
And I got to be honest with you. I think it has to be covered. I don't think there's any point in building it if it's not covered. You mean covered by the public?
Carter
2:20
No, a covered stadium. Like a covered stadium.
Corey
2:25
Yeah, because I was going to say that's a bit of a twist. Yeah. Yeah, no. Giving your previous
Corey
2:28
statements on this matter. No,
Carter
2:29
No, believe me. I mean, the feds are making a significant investment, but at $230 million, it's just not enough. I think that we need to see a more significant investment. This is Tasmania that
Carter
2:40
that we're talking about here. Tasmania,
Zain
2:41
Tasmania, after all. Yeah, I
Carter
2:42
I mean, this isn't, you know, it's not the Bronx. You know, we have certain expectations.
Zain
2:49
What does that mean? i mean that's where yankee stadium is yeah was this okay yeah
Carter
2:54
yeah i mean yankee stadium didn't we're gonna move
Zain
2:56
move it on to our first segment our first segment steven carter it is the strategy check we're gonna check in on a few things okay
Zain
3:01
uh that uh i feel like have a strategic component to them we're gonna do this relatively quickly rapid fire order because i want to get to our main topic at hand it's fine it's
Zain
3:12
oh i'm just gonna add this is this is no options no options carter
Zain
3:15
carter The RNC, Joe Biden, announces he's running for president. The RNC, Republican
Zain
3:21
Republican National Committee, also known as the GOP, put out a 30-second AI
Zain
3:27
AI-generated ad into the future if Joe Biden is reelected. It's got scenes of San Francisco under arrest, migrants flooding bridges and the border, just a society that is failing and crumbling. Talk to me about the strategy here. Do you feel like this was warranted? Do you feel like this is just what we're expecting? Talk to me about the RNC strategy here very quickly. What do you think they're trying to do? And what do you think they're trying to do being so naked
Zain
3:54
naked with the AI generated and so over the top? Are they trying to normalize certain things for the future? Give me your take. When you first saw it, what are they trying to do? Corey, same question to you. Come in in a second. Well,
Carter
4:05
Well, I think that, you know, the Republican Party is to politics as Spinal Tap is to documentaries. Everything has turned up to 11 and nothing makes sense anymore. They are a joke to anybody who's kind of watching from the outside, but they honestly believe what they're doing. And, and, you know, I watched the ad and, uh, it
Carter
4:27
it didn't have much in the way of impact upon me. It didn't, you know, I was just like, well, this feels an awful lot like the Daisy ad. Uh, what year was that? 1964 when we first saw the Daisy ad that was, you know, taking down to people
Zain
4:41
people that, yeah, explain to people the Daisy ad if they're not familiar. Yeah.
Carter
4:43
Yeah. So the Daisy ad was really, it's kind of targeted as one of the very first big negative television ads. It's the 1950s. I can't remember exactly what year. I
Carter
4:52
can't remember who it's targeting. But in
Carter
4:54
in basically what happened was that the, I think it was the Republicans, might've been the Democrats, the basics, the
Corey
5:00
the Democrats against Goldwater. Yeah,
Carter
5:02
Yeah, it was against Goldwater. Basically, the idea is if you elect Goldwater, we will no doubt be facing nuclear annihilation. And they did it by doing a countdown that led to a nuclear explosion. So it wasn't exactly subtle. It was, you know, the world will end if you elect Barry Goldwater. And I think it has to be noted that it was very successful. It was the first big negative ad and it had big impact. And now we now we're living in a world where everybody's using big negative ads. You
Zain
5:33
You know, Corey, I think success is almost beyond the point for me, like whether this ad is effective or not. I just want to get your take on what they're trying to do by adding the AI label, by going so over the top. Carter might say this is their volume and their rhetoric, but is there something that they're trying to do in your mind around AI in particular and perhaps trying to normalize it?
Corey
5:57
it i don't think it has anything to do with normalizing ai it actually has everything to do with what steven said interestingly enough about uh the ad against barry goldwater which is it was the first like one of the reasons that daisy ad was so effective is it was the first ad of that style and people remembered it and we talk about it to this day because it was something that was kind of like a bit of a watershed and the reason why they went so hard on making sure we knew it was ai is because that was the hook the rnc starts to watch it you mean yeah the rnc probably puts out an ad every couple of days correct you know that's just the reality of it and how many of them are you seeing how many of them are you interested in the fact of the matter is they're being seen by their base and they're being seen when they put money behind them so that they become paid ads and what they wanted was a bit of an earned media bump by pushing this out there and it's it's not a terrible gimmick frankly because here we are now talking about this this particular ad.
Corey
6:55
we think that it was particularly artful or not, we also have talked about, Zane, you talked about at the start, the idea that it showed American chaos, you know, San Francisco in chaos and what the stakes of another Biden term would be according to the Republicans. So for me, it's kind of the oldest trick in the book. It's using novelty to get a media hook and using that media hook to spread your message. And I think it was fairly effective in that sense was it a particularly good ad no
Corey
7:24
not from an art point of view but i do think maybe to the point you were driving at zane i i don't believe that our like the rnc was trying to normalize ai
Corey
7:36
ai through this ad but i think ai will be normalized and i think we are going to see a lot of ai ads in the future in some ways i'm surprised it took this long yeah
Zain
7:45
yeah carter finish this off on this button i've got one quick follow-up even though i promised this would be be quick but oh
Carter
7:50
oh i mean i was just thinking back to when we we made so much hay with nancy's app in 2010 you know we had i think less than a thousand users of the app um but the app got huge media attention right because it was the first use of an app in canadian politics and there is something to be said for the the first use just being a hook you know did it change the outcome of the election maybe not the app but certainly the coverage and i i would imagine that that's what we would see when when people actually put the tags on the ai and say look we're using ai and ai came up with this that it has to be the end of the world um you know that's that's just a hook to get attention um for another negative that just frankly
Carter
8:34
frankly wasn't wasn't that good cory
Zain
8:37
cory if you were to set the rules on this would you recommend that ai be labeled going forward let's just say this is the first and in the next year let's use there as a window that That we're probably
Corey
8:47
probably going to see significantly
Zain
8:47
significantly more? Tell me why.
Corey
8:49
Well, because so much of what you watch on television, whether that be Hollywood produced or whether it be a slick advertisement, it might not be AI generated, but it's fiction. You know, when you see a hamburger that looks delicious, it's fiction. There's a lot of fiction there. And this is just a different tool to provide that. Do I think that the same truth in advertising standards should apply?
Corey
9:10
Yes. And I think the bigger problem is that politics can get away with not being truthful in their advertisements. But, but ultimately, I think that there's a certain art to it. And I don't really care if you used AI, or if you rotoscoped it, or if you animated it, or you used any of the other number of storytelling tools we use, that's not of concern to me. And your eyes deceive you all the time. Frankly, AI is a little easier to see that you're being deceived than than a lot of the other more sophisticated tools that we use currently. Carter,
Zain
9:39
Carter, same question to you. Would you want the label? Would you want an AI label on your political advertisements agnostic of jurisdiction going forward? I
Carter
9:48
I think only if it was simulating someone else's voice or images. So I think, you know, we played around with Rachel Notley's voice at our at our
Carter
9:59
our live show. And I have currently synthesized both your voice and Corey's for my own personal enjoyment. And
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