Podcast 11 - The Sharpie Test_ AI, Power & the Press ft. Michael Ashley

Episode Description

True Journalism | Season 2026 "The Mirror and the Machine: AI, Press Freedom, and the Erosion of Truth" Featuring Michael Ashley — Forbes Columnist, AI Philosopher, and Author of 50+ Books

Five days ago, a sitting President of the United States reportedly handed his acting attorney general a stack of news articles with the word treason written in Sharpie on a sticky note. The result? Grand jury subpoenas targeting the Wall Street Journal and other newsrooms — demanding reporter records on Iran war coverage. Dow Jones called it an attack on constitutionally protected news gathering. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned it. And somewhere in the metadata of all of this, buried inside AI systems now processing communication surveillance, the question isn't just who leaked. The question is: who's watching the watchers?

This week on True Journalism, Richard Schreiber and Tom Martin sit down with one of the most compelling thinkers at the intersection of technology, ethics, and human power — Michael Ashley. Forbes columnist. Former Disney screenwriter. Author of more than 50 books, five of them bestsellers. And the creator of The AI Philosopher, a Substack dedicated to the critical question our era refuses to ask out loud: what happens to humanity when the machine stops being a tool and starts being the enforcer?

Michael's journey started in the University of Missouri's legendary journalism school, moved through Hollywood, into the boardrooms of IBM Watson collaborators, and eventually to interviews with some of the biggest names in AI — Ben Goertzel, Peter Diamandis, David Hanson, and Ray Kurzweil. He was writing about Neuralink-style brain interfaces in 2018, years before they became a dinner table conversation.

But this episode isn't just about technology. It's about the slow, deliberate collapse of the institutions that were supposed to protect us from exactly the moment we're living in right now.

When the Fairness Doctrine died in 1987, opinion moved in dressed as news. When journalists got comfortable at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, they stopped being reporters and became stenographers. When Barack Obama codified wartime powers, the next administration was handed a loaded weapon. When AI went from disembodied chatbot to a drone with facial recognition software, the Sharpie note became the least of our problems.

Michael makes the case that AI is not the villain in this story — we are, because we stopped asking who benefits. He warns of a coming robot revolution that will make the ChatGPT moment look like a warm-up act. He challenges parents, journalists, and citizens to stop outsourcing their judgment to algorithms, AI companions, and partisan media ecosystems that profit from fear.

And in the tradition of Edward R. Murrow, he leaves us with this: fear is contagious, but so is bravery.

This is not a tech episode. This is not a political episode. This is a story about what it means to be a human being in a world that is rapidly being reshaped by systems that have no ethics, no conscience, and no accountability — unless we build those things in. Starting right now. Starting with us.

Apply the sticky note test this week. Name the specific fact that was proven wrong in what you're being told. If the answer is nothing — you know exactly what you're looking at.

Good night, and good luck.

Guest: Michael Ashley Find Michael: The AI Philosopher on Substack | Forbes (Wednesdays) | LinkedIn

Hosts: Richard Schreiber & Tom Martin This is True Journalism.

Topics Covered

• The DOJ Subpoenas & Press Freedom Crisis — A president writes "treason" on a sticky note; newsrooms face subpoenas over Iran war coverage; the pattern of executive press suppression across multiple administrations
• AI Surveillance and the Journalist as Target — How AI systems combining telecom data and drone feeds are being used to identify and track journalists; 128 journalists killed in 2025; spyware on the rise
• The Fairness Doctrine and the Death of Balanced Media — How its 1987 repeal opened the door for opinion masquerading as news and the steady degradation of journalistic standards
• Michael Ashley's Origin Story — From the University of Missouri J-school to Hollywood screenwriting to co-authoring Own the AI Revolution with interviews from Ben Goertzel, Peter Diamandis, David Hanson, and Neil Sahota
• The Robot Revolution — Why embodied AI changes everything; robot police in China; AI companions replacing human relationships; the real-world implications of the Black Mirror scenarios we laughed at
• The Neuralink Question — Why the argument against brain-chip technology collapses the moment your child's classmates have IQs above 150
• Media Literacy in the Algorithm Age — 40% of Americans now get their news primarily from AI; the absence of ethical guardrails; how fear-based headlines spike cortisol and drive clicks
• The Monoculture Collapse — How decentralized media destroyed shared cultural touchstones and why that fragmentation weakens democratic resilience
• Parenting in the AI Era — How parents can safeguard their children's minds, model better behavior, and stop raising obedient workers and start raising entrepreneurs
• Boys, Education, and the Disengagement Crisis — Why forcing boys into eight-hour classroom structures is failing them; the link to disengagement, Adderall, and violence
• AI as a Philosophical Mirror — Why AI reflects back what we value, what we fear, and what we refuse to be honest about — and what the DOJ story reveals about where journalism stands today
• The Micro-Enterprise Journalism Model — How agentic AI enables a single journalist to build a credible, independent news operation that answers to no one but their ethics
• The Duopoly Trap — Why framing press suppression as a "Trump problem" lets every other administration off the hook and prevents systemic change
• The Containment Problem — Why you cannot put AI back in the bottle; the Gutenberg parallel; why civic responsibility — not legislation — is the only real answer
• Who Benefits? The Real Business Model of Fear — How major AI platforms and media companies profit from emotional engagement, outrage, and dependency — and what citizens can do about it
• Edward R. Murrow's Question in 2026 — Is what you're being told true? — and why that question has never been more urgent or more dangerous to ask

About the Hosts

Richard Schreiber

Richard Schreiber is a strategic AI consultant, journalist, autism advocate, and fiction writer based in New York City. With a background spanning investigative reporting, technology consulting, and over 25 years in legal technology and procurement, Richard brings a rare combination of real-world experience and analytical depth to every conversation. He is the founder of a growing autism advocacy foundation and the author of multiple books, including Autism Care Revolution. His journalism is guided by one principle: facts first, always.

Tom Martin

Tom Martin is a veteran television news producer with more than 20 years at some of the most respected names in broadcasting. He got his start at the CBS News Washington Bureau in 1982 — where he witnessed history firsthand, including being in the room when Nixon delivered his infamous "I am not a crook" statement. The son of a legendary newspaper editor who helped launch USA Today, Tom grew up believing journalism is a sacred public trust. He carries that belief into every story he tells.

Our Mission

True Journalism exists because facts still matter. The press is a watchdog — not a lapdog — and the American public deserves reporting that shines a light rather than throws a shadow. This is not a political show. We do not have a party. We have one principle: if it is not a verified fact, we will say so.

True Journalism airs weekly. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's Friday, may fifteenth, twenty twenty six. And five days ago the President of the United States handed his acting attorney general a stack of news articles, the word treason written in a Sharpie on a sticky note. The result? Grand jury subpoenas to the Wall Street Journal and other newsrooms demanding reporters' records on Iran war coverage. Dow Jones called it an attack on constitutionally protected news gathering. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned it. And somewhere in the metadata of all this, in the AI systems now processing communication surveillance, the question isn't just who leaked. The question is who's watching the watchers. I'm Richard Striver.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Thank you, Richard. Tom Martin here. And this is as a longtime journalist myself, I can say this isn't a news story, but it's definitely an escalation. The fairness doctrine, which was repealed by Ronald Reagan in 1987, required broadcasters, or when it was in effect, required prod required broadcasters to present controversial public issues with honesty and balance. But when that standard died, opinion dressed as news moved in. We have all seen that happen. When that wasn't enough, the machinery turned towards the source. Intimidate the reporter, show the newsroom, the machinery turned toward the source. As I said, dry up the well. Nixon tried that with Daniel Ellsberg. I think I'm old enough to remember that from my childhood. Barr secretly seized reporters' emails during Donald Trump's first term in office. And now there's a policy mechanism to enable it, and a presidential Sharpie, as Richard said, to accelerate it. This is true journalism.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

And our guest today, Michael Ashley, has spent his entire career exactly at this intersection, or at least recently, Forbes columnist, former Disney screenwriter, author of more than 50 books, five of them bestsellers, and the creator of the AI Philosopher, a substack dedicated to what happens when technology meets human wisdom, ethics, and power. And as Tom said earlier, he is the right person for this moment. So, Michael Ashley, welcome to True Journalism. Great to have you.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Thank you. It's an honor to be here with you guys today.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

That's great. I'm privileged to have you as well. Tell us a little bit about, we know where you've ended up, but what was what constituted your journey? You seem to have done a great many things from screenwriting to journalism to now writing on AI and what's top of mind.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Actually, my background wasn't journalism. So my major in college was philosophy, but my but my minor was journalism. I went to the University of Missouri. They have a very famous phone school. I'm sorry, journalism school, I asked one of the film. But it's very well known and I feel very honored. Actually, what I was studying originally was philosophy in Polisci. And I ended up switching my minor to journalism my last year in college. And they typically don't let you work for the Missourian if you do that. But the girl that I was dating at the time put in the good words for me. And I was able to do that. And I they gave me the worst speak possible. It's very small town outside of Columbia, Missouri, but I'm happy to report that I was able to get two major stories on the front page because of a big thing that was going on regarding tax increment financing. Anyway, I feel very blessed that I had that background working in the newsroom and actually got to see how newsrooms operate because I think it's essential to understand the way that the news cycle works. Some of the things that you mentioned before, the way that news gets generated is not this organic thing that made people think it is. It's very much top-down. And in addition to that, we are we receive that in the forms of the culture and society that grow out of that, the stories that we cover and the angles that and the way that they're presented very much influence what we talk about and the culture that we live in. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Michael have to jump in real quick. And again, thank you for being with us today, of course. It's so funny. I have some friends, Richard. We probably have friends like this who are into astrology, or reason we're in sync or whatever, but my parents met at the University of or journalism school in uh Columbia, Missouri in the 1950s. And one of their lifelong friends, who you might have heard of, Dan Gordon Sauter, was like one of their life, literally lifelong friends. And so when I decide I didn't want to be a lawyer, I what should I do with my life? He's the one I talked to. So there's roots in the Missouri there. I made philosophy, and I didn't I never actually studied journalism. But I like what you said there. And I wanted to just dive in one, there's so many things we could talk about. We could talk for hours here, obviously, with your many interests in your background. But when I first contacted you six, nine months ago when I was working on project pitching a press release for an artificial general intelligence company, you said, Oh, that sounds really interesting because a book I wrote years ago, co-wrote years ago, interviewed the co-founder of that particular AGI company. And so I both Richard and I are totally fascinated by AI and many aspects. But you were certainly on that early cusp, right? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Thank you. Yeah, it's that book over here of Own the AI Revolution. It's his name is Ben Gertzl. He's been on Joe Rogan and many other podcasts. I think he was on Lex Friedman's podcast as well. And I think it's important to note I started that book in 2017, it published in 2018. As part of doing this, I worked with Neil Soho. He was on the team that created IBM Watson. And so we're lucky to have 32 amazing people participate in the book. Ben was one of them. Other folks like Peter Diamondis was in it, David Hansen from Hansen Robotics. And I remember that I would come out of these interviews with my mind blown, and I would tell my wife, I'd say, I can't believe what we're talking about. One of the things that we were talking about, because I remember I worked on this Forbes article with Ben uh a while ago, was what is now called Neurolink, the AI brain interface, and wrote an article at the time. Now, this was back in 2018 for Forbes, and I brought up this notion that has special relevance today. And what I said to people was when people think about putting a chip in their brain, they're most likely they're going to say no. But I want you to frame it this way. Imagine that you have a child and they're in the fourth grade, and you start hearing that all of their classmates or several of them have IQs that are north of 150, and you don't want your child to fall behind. I think it's human nature that the strong stance that we may have could very much be affected as you begin to look at the other people in the way that they're competing. And I think that's reflective of the idea that when it comes to AI, the we're talking about the issues that really cut to the core of what it means to be human, and there are no black and white answers mostly. And it is a very nuanced, complex.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, yeah. I had the benefit of seeing another pantheon in the AI space, Ray Kurzweil, back around 19 2016. And he had just published, I think, his book on singularity, talking about obviously the advent of supercomputers thinking for themselves and learning for themselves, which is very science fiction-y, The Terminator and with Skynet and so forth. But yeah, all of that stuff just seemed to be out there. But since ChatGPT 2.0 came along in November of 2022, the world has changed because AI is now consumerized in the same way Steve Jobs did with the iPhone. But your Substack is called the AI philosopher, not the AI analyst. And you've said we need a philosopher in the room, not just a technologist. And I completely agree with that. When did it stop being a productivity story for you and become more of a power story? Oh, that's a real question.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

If I'm answering this correctly, I'm I'm going to back up and say something else, which is the reason why I think it's so important to have these kind of conversations, including the one that we're having now, is that because we've seen the decimation of a monoculture. And so when I was in still in journalism school, most people hadn't cut the cord on cable. We watched typically the same channels, not like we did in the 1960s when there was just three channels, but we largely participated in the same cultural conversations, movies, TV shows, bands that we were listening to, mostly they were the same. That's not the case anymore. We have decentralized media. And although there are good aspects of it, it allows people to have unique, wonderful conversations like we're having right now, where you don't have to get past the gatekeeper to get to get on the air. But on the other hand, we are not sharing the same cultural touchstones. We're not talking about the same things. And right now, what I think the most powerful, the most impactful developments are happening in the world that we've ever seen in the history of the world. And yet we're not having these kinds of conversations. Instead, we're all in our algorithmic siloed zones, right? And not only is that bad for the republic, but it's also bad for us to talk about things that matter. And I feel like I'm straying from your comment from your question, but I'll say one more thing. I just did an article that's going to come out next week on what I'm calling the robot revolution. So this most AI revolution. And I want people to realize that in the same way, this juggernaut that you mentioned that came out in 2022, which had GBT, think about the ways in which it's impacted the world in just a few short years. But all of the AI that we've ever had has been disembodied. You would interact with it on the chatbot, maybe you talk to your phone or whatever. What happens when you're walking down the streets and there is a robot with an AI brain? And I'll go further. What happens when it's the server in the restaurant that you're eating? What happens when you're looking at a table and the person is there with his AI robotic girlfriend?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Something in law.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

So that's a companion. That's why I created this sub stack. I have two young kids and I want to be addressing these issues. So to go back to what you were saying, if I'm answering this correctly, I write for Forbes as well. And I typically tend to focus on more of the nuts and bolts for the economy and things like that. Although I do try to bring in philosophy. But for me, the beauty of this and the fun part for me as a science fiction fan, lifelong, is that I can talk about these things in a way that it touches what it means to be alive.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah. And just to extend that, in the day AI got a body, I think which you wrote about precisely in this area, where you say that you basically articulate that this is a conversation that we're not having enough. That we have robocops in China, like the 1987 movie with Peter Weller, humanoid AI in the White House with potential teachers, AI powered surveillance that we know open AI is going to be implementing on American citizens. How does the disembodied AI change the government press power equation? I think it really puts a fly in that one, doesn't it? If AI meta if AI can track metadata, communication, this physical location in real time. Wow, it looks that presidential note with a sharpie. Seems like a much older problem.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

I think it goes back to what you opened with in your call open a moment ago. I'll go one step further. The state has a monopoly on violence, right? And so what we've ever known, and it's not been very good, is human cops, human military, that they do things that we are not always fans of, right? You mentioned before from the article, there are robot cops in the streets of China. Now it doesn't take much imagination to imagine a world in five or ten years from now in which we have normalized that military operations as well as domestic policing operations are conducted by robots. You've probably seen the episode of Black Mirror where they have those robotic dogs that just won't stop. That that's not just fantasy, that's completely possible. All you would need to do is with a drone that costs 30 or 35 bucks, you can use facial recognition technology and sick it on somebody and it won't stop. So you began this podcast talking about pressure from the White House upon journalists covering this war. That's nothing new, that's happened for decades, right? What is new is the power to enforce these kinds of things. Technology is a is famously a double-edged sword, so it can be a wonderful thing, it could be a terrible thing. And when you begin to enforce policies, especially that are unconstitutional policies with violence that is directed by not flesh and blood people, but robots, and let's remember too, the accuracy of a human being with a gun, despite all the movies that we've watched, is typically not very good on the aggregate. However, if you had an AI drone or a robot who had almost near-perfect accuracy, it could be shooting down protesters or people that the state deems to be bad. You can imagine in the way that we talked or you talked about earlier, a chilling effect. You have to imagine that would have a profound chilling effect. And my message to people, especially from the journalism aspect of it, is unfortunately, we live in a very polarized time. And what's popular and acceptable with one president continues to the next administration. So I'll give you an example. People loved Barack Obama. He's considered to be a very popular president, and yet he codified a lot of wartime powers that we are seeing right now that I was never a fan of. The idea that there was a kill list under Barack Obama, okay, fine, he may have been popular at the time, but what happens when we have a president, I don't care when his policies or her policies are, then the next administration, they get to use those powers. And we've seen them, especially post-9-11. We live in a world that's vastly different from what it was pre-2001. And it and as time goes on and generations die out and new generations come in, they don't know a previous world. They don't know a time when you could go to the airport and you didn't have to have a basically a strip search to get on an airplane. And I know I'm veered off from the original question, but these are some of the things that I think about.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, I think I have a question for you actually. A couple words come to mind philosophy and awaken and things like that. And so there are a lot of people who the pace of change, as you said earlier, is faster than I've only been alive X number of years, but it seems like it's the fastest pace of change ever in humanity. And so a lot of people just want to put the lid back on that. And we heard from some writers who write about AI, or movie directors like James Cameron or someone, or founders like who is the who's one of the I forgot his name, but one of the early founders of AI, saying it's Armageddon, or they need us to install the maternalistic instinct, or we're all in danger of it. A lot of people just want to put the lid back on this, but it seems to me there's no going back. But is do we really need to awaken the citizenry? Woke is a negative word right now. But do we all realize these are happening? We better, we we can't just shirk our duty as citizens or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

I think it comes back to civic responsibility. So I'm reading a book right now, I think it's called The Coming Wave. It's a gentleman that was part of Deep Deep Nine and created that, and he brings up the containment problem. And he discusses the aspect that throughout the course of history, there's never been a technology that was very effective and helpful that wasn't accepted. You couldn't roll it back. He brings up the Gutenberg printing press, which at the time was a major threat to the elites. They liked the fact that people were illiterate, it allowed them to have tremendous power in true. Yeah. I'm gonna close the door because my wife just told me and I hope I'm no worries.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

And in that thought, but but but I also want to hear about the book that you're working on now because that sounds very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Oh, sure, absolutely. So he talked about this idea that you can't contain it, and I agree, and I think it'd be foolish to try to contain it. Here's why it's not like the Manhattan Project where you had one dedicated group of scientists under government control that you and even that wasn't contained, right? Right now, it the kind is out of the bag. Every anybody pretty much can do can use these tools. You, for a very small amount of money, can get a synthetic biological kit sent to you in which you can dabble in genetics at a way that scientists could only dream of a couple of years ago. This is out here now. And so there is no putting it back. There is no way to contain it, in my opinion, even if we wanted to. And I'm not a fan of more laws. We have too many laws already. What I my my suggestion, and it comes back to the book I think you're talking about, which has to do with parenting, is this the problem I think that we've had for too long in this country is that we have a parentified nation. We expect our government to be mom and dad for us, and we are not acting as mom and dads for ourselves. And you can see it in the way that we raise our children. You may have seen this report that came out, I think it was yesterday, uh the dismal way that our children are performing across the board when it comes to education. And I put the blame not on the educational system, it's on parents. We you go to a restaurant these days, and it happened to me yesterday. Look at the tables. Mom, dad, the kids are all on their phones. What message is that sending, right? It's sending a message that it's okay to abdicate our role as responsible citizens. And we've done this for too long. If we want to have a better world, it's a cliche that Gandhi said, but it's true. Be the change that you want to see. Get involved, learn AI, learn about these things, and have an active role. Take part in our world instead of just tuning off and watching Netflix.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, that's well said. And as a parent, we really feel that. And it's a challenge, it's a problem. Kids are on their phones way too much. We've seen legislation in various states. I know New Zealand banned smartphones all the way up through high school because we're kids are losing that socialization, that interaction, that emotional growth. Obviously, COVID kickstarted that, and kids are a year to years behind in their emotional growth. And the cell phones equal use in technology is only exacerbating that that whole pattern. Then you're right. We as parents are responsible for the development of our kids in the right way and to become engaged and to look at AI through a lens of being critical of it, like anything else. So looking looking forward to your book, too.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Not not at the risk of seeming like I'm going down a rabbit hole, and you can tell me if I am. I'm thinking, again, this is a generation of kids. I remember when the Columbia shooting happened. I have a friend in Connecticut who's mom who lost her little six-year-old child in 2012. And kids in school. My kids are in their 20s now, so they didn't want part of this per specifically, but it's like practicing lockdowns, and then as well as the uncertainty of what's going on in the world. And it's hard don't get Richard and I started on politics here, but it's like there's a sense of uncertainty in the world, and that must be very yeah. The younger folks must be feeling that.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

It's just something to become that's why there's a world shortage on Adderall, and so many kids report anxiety disorder, stress. And is there any surprise to that given not only what's going on in the world, but they're incredibly agitated and involved state using technology?

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Okay, I want to bring up that, and I like rabbit holes, so let's go back here. And not many people understand this or know this. There's a wonderful book, speaking of journalism, by Neil Postman called Entertaining Ourselves to Death. And if you read that, you'll learn that we used to be a mostly 100% literate nation. And what had happened was we had we didn't have the this big budgeted department of education to oversee it. People were educated. How did they do it? They made reading a priority number one in that house in their house. So Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book, Outliers. And he said the one thing that they can help to assure that your child will be literate and come to love books is that you have a house filled with books, right? You have to model that good behavior. That was the case. Now back in the 1800s or whatever, they didn't have as many books as we have now, but they typically had the Bible, they had Pilgrim's Progress, they had some other perhaps Shakespearean plays, whatever it was, and it was important to them. And they made that a priority. But the other thing that they did was they allowed the schools to be locally based, and this is key when it comes to boys and men. Typically, there were male instructors. Now I have two little boys. I my boys, one of them just participated in track and field day. That's where I was this morning. And I watched them after. Do you know what little boys like to do? They like to wrestle, they like to fight with each other, they like to run around. I don't care how interesting the subject matter is, you are not going to contain that boy. And this idea that we could put a band-aid on him and give him Adderall is asinine, in my opinion. Instead, what we should be doing is leaning into the natural sensibilities of our boys. Let them run around. You're talking about physicality with robots. We need that as human beings. Yeah. Could teach boys, let them run around and experience the world physically. That's the way things used to happen. And then when they're worn out and tired, that would be the time when you can give them a book. You weren't talking about this, Tom, but I think it has a lot to do with Columbine and these other shootings and the ways in which it's exploding, no pun intended uh intended in the zeitgeist right now. We are seeing violence, we're seeing all these upheavals because this system does not work. And when we try to force top down Educational mandates on our children. It doesn't work. Right now we have a problem that our boys are disengaged in schools. And so they're not going to college. They're not earning the same amount that they used to. And it's a problem in the dating world. The women out there don't want to date these losers. And I don't blame them. And for their part, boys don't see any reason to get off the couch. They're living there at their parents' house. Yeah. The wonderful book called Men Without Work that talks about this very issue. And so this is part of we're seeing this ripple throughout the culture. And again, I laid at the feet of parents and culture in general. We have to model better stories. So it's Sapiens by Yval Harari. And he talks about the importance of storytelling. We had got to tell a better story in America to change the behavior of the population.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah, it's so interesting that you mentioned that because I'm working on some initiatives that actually use AI involved in storytelling, where youths can create their own characters, put them in their own situation, and then basically tell a story based on whatever direction their imagination goes. That might be the kind of use where AI and technology can still encourage kids to be interactive and at play. But I want I want to talk that that's a phenomenal subject matter. And I we all racking our brains, how can AI facilitate kind of a shift in in our education system? Because colleges and universities, what they're what they're producing in their old paradigm in many cases, isn't really producing the kinds of opportunities for kids coming out of college. And you you talk about in one of your articles, I know that what up to 50% of entry-level jobs will diminish. I know Guitar Diamondas is talking about 800 million robots in the workforce in within the next 10 years. Back to your point earlier, right? Kids coming up today, if they are learned, like my daughter is, she reads all this stuff. And it's what kind of a world are they going to be in in the next five years with this onslaught with AI and robots and everything? How can we as parents really encourage them and prepare them to be on the right side of the equation?

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Again, I think it comes down to storytelling and the story that we tell. Let's remember, this goes back to the very beginning of this conversation. Let's think about the way the business model, the newspapers sell. Now I'm talking about the digital version or the physical one or just media in general. They sell based on theory of being a primal, if I primal emotion, right? And so if I were to open my YouTube app right now and I would go down and read them off to you, I would say 90 to 95% of the videos there are negative videos. They're using a headline to spike your cortisol to make you feel and make you that I gotta read this, I gotta know what's going on, right? Okay, so let's counter that.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

You talk about the and oh, just throwing this in real quick. I apologize, but I was because I love social media, I confess. I was just watching, I forget if it was Jon Stewart or one of the late night hosts showing with like a replay, maybe from I don't even know what news network. But again, it was several days after that virus outbreak on the cruise ship, but it only affected a few people, but they were showing ambulances and they're drumming music.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

And it yeah, a non-totally non-communicable disease, and they're already drawing parallels to COVID unnecessarily and inaccurately, just to ramp up the news cycle. Right. And he gets you more impressions, which means more money, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:36

So this goes back to what I talked about personal responsibility, going back to storytelling. We, as a parent, I have my kids are seven and eleven. I'm not gonna show them a Freddie Krueger movie at all, by the way. But I would definitely not show it to them before bed, right? You have to, and my kids want to watch other kinds of movies, and they ask me, why won't you let me do this? And I say to them, You, I'm your dad. I'm a guardian for your brain at this point in your life. I've seen these movies, I know the way that they're going to affect you. And even though you think it's cool right now, I promise you, I have to safeguard your brain so that you don't go to those dark places. Now, talking earlier about these young people, they're thinking about college. I was just watching this thing on CBS News about how fearful they are about this job market. Where does that fear come from? It comes from the narrative. And where does the narrative come from? It comes from culture, it comes from all of these different bastions, whether it's TV, the internet, whatever it is, right? And we have to remember they're they are going after the profit motive. And that's fine. Okay, they can do that. But what is our responsibility as parents is to safeguard our kids' brains. And that's it. And what I mean by this is there's a quote by Albert Einstein that says the most important philosophical question that you can ask yourself is whether you think you live in a benevolent universe or not. And so if you believe as a young person that you do believe that you live in a benevolent universe, because of the stories that you've been told, when you graduate from college, or even if you don't graduate from college, the where you begin to go in your life will be predetermined by your outlook, by your perspective. And we have got to safeguard our brains. Right now, too many young people are getting their information and their news from their AI companions, and they're getting from these different YouTube channels and different things like that, and they do not understand the power of narrative, the power of information to work upon the psyche and the way that it's changing how they view the world. And in some ways, we have to teach a new form of media literacy and to understand who benefits from these kinds of news stories. Block yourself because I truly believe that the world will be amazing. I think that we're going into a new renaissance era that we can never imagine before. But if you go on the news, you're not going to get that message. You know, so it's up to us to put out good information and to safeguard the information that's going into our minds.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

I saw a stat that surprised me, and that is 40% of people get their news almost exclusively from AI. And AI has no kind of guardrails, controls, ethical considerations, or anything that we who went to journalism school were born with. Not to say, and there are still plenty of good journalists out there who I believe abide by the journalism code of conduct or whatever you want to call it, that we all studied back in the days of Ed Merle and whatnot. But AI has no such considerations. And there's a lot of deep fake stuff out there that, to your point, is just ratcheting up anger just to get clicks. Has nothing to do with being informative.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Can I have one more thing? Going back to that line who benefits, think about this for just a moment. When it comes to the public models, they typically cost some of them are free, but some of them most of them are cost five or twenty bucks a month, right? Why are they doing that? Who benefits? Who benefits is these major companies are pursuing the singularity that you mentioned earlier. They are AGI and ASI. How do you get there? According to their logic, you get there through training, training on data. We are once again the product, right? How do you get someone to engage longer with their product? You get them emotionally connected. How do you get them emotionally connected? Get them outraged, get them upset, get them feeling just like they need to be on this. It serves their ends, which is fine, but we all have to remember what's going on, and so we make better choices.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Or they're using AI as a friend or companion, like you mentioned earlier. AI has been used more and more now as an emotional crutch. In some ways, it's helped, because at least it's someone who listens and he doesn't say bad things.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

That's not science fiction anymore, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Sure, yeah, it's not. Exactly. But also think about that for just a moment. Mark Zuckerberg famously said that we all need an AI companion, an AI friend, right? So you were mentioning the movie Her, which helped preview this moment, it's real now. But what happens to a society where people, men or women, are finding companionship in a disembodied AI or an embar or an embodied AI in the form of a robot? Largely these models are trained to be affirming, again, because we are the product and they're trying to get more data out of us. But more importantly, if you think about the relationships that we're in, they are mirrors. They teach us our vulnerabilities, they teach us the bad things about us. I'm sure that our partners would tell you that people and they've helped us like you know, AI girlfriend isn't gonna tell you your problems, right? And eventually, if we're not careful, we will look at population collapse, that people don't start families.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Wow. So I want to follow up on what again parents can do. And you made a comment that we should stop raising obedient workers and start raising entrepreneurs because AI automates compliance, but it doesn't automate judgment. That's still our purview. Let's apply that to journalism, though. What what does a reporter or news organization that survives the current moment? What is what do they look like going forward under that same scenario?

SPEAKER_02 31:10

This is a wonderful question, by the way. So what I would say is when I was so when I was going through in the J school, back then the hope was that you would get hired by a newspaper and you would work for them. They were paying basically $13 an hour, which is you can't live on that, right? And so many people hoped that they would get this job out of college. But what if instead you thought to yourself, now that we have a gentic AI, they can essentially be a full-time employee for me. And the technology has been democratized so much that even if I'm a journalist and I didn't go to school for computer programming, I could set up my own AI journalism company. I wrote about this for Forbes, I call it the microenterprise model. And what I say to people is in the 20th century, size was a proxy for power. You had big companies like GE that were so powerful because they had a lot of people working for them. Right now, you can have a company of one that can compete on the market. So imagine let's say that you wanted to cover sports. Let's say that's your niche for journalism, right? You don't have to wait for Sports Illustrated to hire you. Start your own company. And by the way, you'll probably be a better journalism journalist than many of the ones out there that are beholden to making money. They go to the White House press correspondence dinner and kiss to whoever. Forget have your own virtue, have your own standard that you live by, and then create your own company that lives by those standards.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Yeah. So well put. So you're right that AI AI is a philosoph philosophical mirror. It reflects back what we value, what we fear, what we haven't been honest with ourselves about to examine this closer. The DOJ story is also a mirror looking into it. What does it show us where journalism is right now? And that, of course, is the story about the subpoenas triggered by the president, who is apparently against fact-based and truthful reporting that whatever it's inconvenient or doesn't represent to his best interests.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

I have my own problems with the president on that. And but he's not the only president who's done something like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Yeah, LBJ did it, of course, during the Vietnam era, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Bush did it as well. Let's look at the way that he went after the people that were protesting the second Iraq war. Let's look at the way that Obama was going after journalists who weren't on board board with the Syrian airstrikes. So that's been on for a long time. But I would actually I want to take issue with the journalists themselves. And it goes back to what it might comment about the White House press correspondence dinner. When I would watch those events year after year, and I noticed how chummy they were, it upset me a great deal. My one of my heroes is Glenn Greenwald, and he has for a long time brought and Jimmy Doris, another one, has brought the ways in which journalists have failed at their craft, they have abandoned their ethics. They should be taking power to task. They should be fighting against power. It seems to me that we would not be in this place we are in now if it wasn't a slow degradation of the ethics of our journalists year after year instead of combating and holding our our leaders to the fire and pushing back on them. They have been happy to be on the air on Air Force One with them, to go to the Met Gala and to participate in the parties. They are not journalists, they are stenographers. And what I would suggest is we have to go back to what it means to be a journalist. It means not being friends with your source. No, it means doing the hard journalistic work because if journalists were stronger, they would not be able to be bullied by this administration or another administration. And I think that it's not it's reprehensible what Trump is doing, but it's equally reprehensible with what journalism in general has done over the last few decades.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, we need more journalists like Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson. Right, Tom?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Yeah, no, I was gonna jump in on I appreciate that you phrased it like that. I think that's a very important point. Again, I grew up in a journalist household. My dad was a newspaper editor, and he was very inscrutable as far as no, we can't accept the free tickets to that, you know, because we can't, we don't and so now I think back of so many examples you could choose, but for some reason I'm thinking of Brian Williams. He said, No, who's on that flight? Yeah, I did that. So you're boasting about your I am the celebrity, which is the Anderson Cooper, but now he's hosting the uh annual New Year's Eve. It's like they're celebrating sound of culture.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah, and I think it comes down to our ethics as a society as well. If you think about who used to be our heroes, it used to be religious leaders, it used to be poets. I think the award for poetry they discontinued, but the at the beginning of the 20th century used to have a poet laureate. We don't care about those things. Used to be novelists, it used to be thinkers, intellectuals, artists, and instead, who do people who do our young people want to be? Influencers, right? Vapid influencers who are just famous because they're famous, right? And Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, they paved the way for this, right? And so there's substance behind them, and that paved the way for people like Brian Williams and others to pretend to be a journalist or whatever, but really they just want people looking at them because it makes more money, and there's nothing behind it. And again, I go back to our values, especially parents. We have to tell our kids you can do better than this, and just being someone looking at you and you do dumb things on YouTube. You could do better than that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

In the as Mr.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Beast said, oh no, sorry, go to come Mr.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Beast. I was gonna say it in the classic true journalism close, if Edward Armurrow were alive today, watching the entire arc of our AI consciousness to embodied robots, to a president writing treaton treason on a shar on a sticky pad. What do you think he would say to a young journalist sitting down to write their first story in 2026?

SPEAKER_02 36:59

I don't know what he what he would say, but here's what I would hope he would say, which is this things don't have to continue the way that they are. Anything can change, but it begins with the individual. And so we may look at all these things out there and be dismayed, disappointed, upset, and that's good. That's fuel. But it doesn't mean that they have to continue. And it takes just one person that says no and doesn't go along with it. And fear is contagious, but so is bravery. And so one person acts brave and displays standards and ethics, that shows an exemplar to someone else, and they begin to emulate that. And I think that is how you turn this around. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

There's still room for a rosa park of parks of our tech edge. Of course, like that.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Yeah. Even in our politicians today, we see a f a few islands in the mix that are standing up uh for what's truthful and what's right. So we'll see. All right, this is a part where we talk about the top five propaganda stories to wrap up. Michael, you're welcome to stay with us. Just so we talked about the Trump treason sharpie note that the spin on that was investigating criminal leaks that endanger troops in the field. That's what A. G. Blanche said. Exactly. But the subpoenas target reporter records on a risk assessment article published before the hostilities. There's no specific factual error in the story actually identified. It's crazy. And then we talked earlier about the Joint Chiefs when they warned regarding General Dan Cain and the Pentagon officials warning Trump of extended campaign risks five days before the war campaign. This was reported by some reporters, maybe at the Wall Street Journal, and now they were subpoenaed for basically saying what was a fact-based comment made by the president's own cabinet. Pam Bondi's DOJ reversal, restoring the DOJ's ability to protect national security from criminal leaks. So any basically any news story that gets out there that's contrary to what the administration thinks is consistent with its narrative is now called a criminal leak. And again, you mentioned earlier that Attorney General Bill Barr secretly seized reporters' emails during the first Trump administration. This new policy allowing subpoenas is just another pattern of executive press suppression now across two terms, and it's, as we know, getting worse. And then we talked about AI surveillance, targeting journalists, tech companies providing law enforcement tools to the government or to governments under national security authority. The IFJ, which has over 600,000 media professionals in 148 countries, documents AI systems combining telecom data with drum feeds to identify and track journalists in conflict zones. 128 journalists actually were killed in 2025. Spyware and AI surveillance targeting journalists is on the rise. Crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

And then finally, and I think this is really there is a game that's being played on the American public. It's been doing going on for a long time. But it's the duopoly. It's this left versus right issue. And so what I want people to understand is that every four years or so, we get to kick out the other people and bring in someone else. And it comes down to identity politics. The things you're talking about, I'm not in favor of them, but they're not a large departure from the Biden administration. This is going on during the Obama administration, the Bush administration. And what happens is it's like spectators at a sports game where we want our side to win and we think the other side is bad. But what's going on right now is this is vested power. The amount of executive orders they go through every administration is astonishing. The founding fathers could never believe the ways in which power has been consolidated to this level. And I think it's a mistake that we label this as a Trump problem. Of course, it isn't a Trump problem in some way. This was a Biden problem, too. And what I would suggest to, especially to parents as well, is to help your kids understand that these issues continue administration after administration. And the only way that they're going to change is at the systemic level. It's not by voting in the Democrat in the elections. It's about changing the way in which our republic is governed.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

And we mentioned in the past, Michael, that under the Clinton administration, more young black Americans were incarcerated under the war against crime.

unknown 41:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

And under Obama, more immigrants were expelled than any other administration. Now, Barack Obama was a very effective administrator. One could argue that his efficiency was the reason behind a lot of those numbers. But yeah, to your point, these are things that are not politically oriented. It just so happens the guy in the office now, yeah, he's doing his own flavor, his own version. But you're right. This has been going on and it crosses political lines all the time.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Thank you. And I and it's because I hear it so much, and people get so caught up in the personality of whoever's in there. Think about the excuses that were made about Biden's ability to run his administration. Anyone with a brain knew before he was elected he was not capable of being president. They they threw him to the wolves in that presidential debate. But the press corps had been covering for him for years. And it isn't speaking of an embarrassment, the journalists who now act, oh, he tricked us. We thought he was we thought he was come on.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Speaking of covering, and again, this is from when I was two years old or whatever, but John F. Kennedy, and there were some things going on in that administration that journals like we're just not going to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

And of course, there was a different decorum back then, but I think also that that that time in America, what we benefited from, we had a strong culture, right? And so we could allow these shocks to the system. Even with the protests in the Vietnam War, we were largely grounded. We had a monoculture, but that is completely collapsed in America. And so if you combine that problem with an unhinged president, with a war, goals and objectives have never been explained to the American people. And I don't think it's a legal war. I don't remember Congress voting for this war, right? Nope. So all of these things are going to together, but I think the mistake that we make is when we identify it with one person, as if that person is the first person to do this, right? It's going on administration after administration.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Indeed. So, Michael, you walked in here as a philosopher and left us as exhibit A in the case you've been building that the most dangerous. Thing AI can do isn't to replace us. It's enable the powerful to erase us. And the work you do at the AI Philosopher asking questions the tech press won't ask in the voice of a journalist who's been in the room is exactly what journalists' oldest mandate demands. So we thank you for your pursuit. The fact that you are an ombudsman extraordinaire, and we need more people like you for certain.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Speaking as a journalist, as a parent, as a tech deficienado. Yeah, no, you brought some amazing ideas. We really enjoyed this conversation. Where can people learn more about your writing and your books and so on?

SPEAKER_02 44:39

Thank you both. Those are very wonderful compliments. Yeah, the AI Philosopher is available on Substack. I write a column for Forbes every week. It typically comes out on Wednesday, but you can look me up there. And then if you want, just reach out to me on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Excellent, excellent. And again, Richard, you mentioned we all we're all every episode we mentioned Edward Armuro. And Edward Armuro built his career asking one question is what you're being told true? I love Michael. You were reminding us of that importance of journalists who step up and citizens who take responsibility as well. But Michael, your your tools are we're and at this different age, we keep evolving substack AI ethics instead of the Joe McCarthy debate and so on. But the question remains the same, as you said. It's continued over the different administrations and years. The fairness doctrine was killed in 1987, so power can operate without a mirror in your life's work, which is so impressive, and you've got so many more books ahead of you, I'm sure, is holding that mirror back up to us. And I that's why I love our conversations. I really appreciate the work that you do, the ideas that you shared with us today. So thank you again. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Honor, guys. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Thank you. Sarah Close, this week a president wrote treason in Sharpie to subpoena a newsroom. AI surveillance tracked journalists in a war zone. Forty percent of the country is now getting its news from an algorithm with no accountability standard. Apply the sticky note test. Name the specific fact that was proven wrong in what you're reading. And if the answer is nothing, you know exactly what you're looking at. Build your foundation on that question, and we'll see you on the next wire.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Thanks again. And in the words of Ed R. Murrow, good night and good luck.