Transcript
Hello. Hello. Live. From your mobile exit. Someone hated that. Like, we had like a fan, that hated that we now do it again. Which part of the hate, the yelling, the the Halo. Yeah, I thought they hated the hell. Maybe they just hate me live from your mulch Museum. It's a maniacal. Magical Monday, edition of business fans. Join is always by our BS, correspondent Mountain mascar. That's bored sabermetrics. oh, I do like that. We have a thing. I'm a hydrated frequent Pier. You is that what hydrated really means is? It mean high frequency peer? Is that what that means hydrated? Because that's what? Yeah, well, I drink like one and a half of these things a day. How are you sitting there right now? Do you have a diaper? Do you have a minute? I'm actually wearing a meta diaper. in today's, Bottomless pit called September 19th 2022. Sexy story updates and sleazy academic papers come out. Let's get to it. Come on. I'm going old-fashioned today, going back to our categories. Oh, classic. Let's start with CEOs rule. Yeah Boy. Queen Queen Is Dead. Oh British business grinding to a halt today, Matt. Basically, all stores are closed. The UK government said some workers may not get paid of businesses do not open. Wow, they might not get us. What I mean, how great is this? That is breaking news. You are getting no money. The Queen Is Dead. And finally, a fun tidbit just for me, Matt, or maybe you might like this too. Did you know? There is a poundland in the UK like our Dollar Store. There's a poundland. Excited about that. I'm kind of psyched. I'm not that psyched poundland. How does it deal with inflation? The way ours, do you think it's bad? Do you think it's owned by the same people? Is they just like, go around and it's like, loopy land and Ruble land. I'm putting a note down right now to check into that actually. Did, you know, actually, because like, one yen is like, in fantastic, only small. Do you think they actually have to make it like million yen land? Yeah, 7x Yen land. It's not great. Also, in CEOs rule. Oh no, let's stay in the queen eBay's. Removing Wristband given to those queuing to see the Queen's coffin and E. Bass spokesperson said, these items are against our policies and we were moving them from our site. I don't know. What do you, I don't know what I don't. Did they write down? No response yes, Queen Death wristband, making money off the queen when you're out of a job because everything's closed. You're not gonna get your clothes. You don't have anywhere to go, you're alone. Can I just repeat? Can I just repeat that all these? All these doors are shutting down the UK and some workers might not get paid. Can I just can I just repeat that my lottery? I you can and I'm not sure that anybody anywhere cares. Okay, now it's actually move on Elon Musk. Let's get to the Elon Musk update. You have girlfriend, just sold a collection of his photos and mementos for more than 165,000 dollars that photo. You're looking at now, Matt and for all our listeners viewers, who are actually viewing along with this, which is usually about one or two. Congratulations is that, that many. Now, that's the top photograph. I want to guess how much that one format. Oh, well, hold on. I'm gonna look. Really close closely. First of all, I see flip-flops. I see what looks like computer wires. So, he's clearly doing something genius. Yes. And don't forget the goofy post. There's a goofy. Yes he's going on. Well I don't care. I'm trying to look past the pose. Oh, past the goofiness if I get really close up. It looks like dirty laundry. And I don't know, it looks kind of like there's some bras and behind him I would say 100,000 dollars right there. Oh that's sad. Unfortunately. Oh, it's 22,000 dollars. That's the top photograph. There's also some necklace for 51,000 dollars but that's this is what's going on. Like his necklace. I don't know. Let's move on. You see Jesus now. Have we just move on? Yeah. Again, filed new claims when the war with Twitter. He's saying that now he's there's a conspiracy among Twitter Executives to deceive the public. I I don't want to read this quote from this new file and from his Lord because it's just so beautiful and bombastic and folded full of hyperbole. I just like it. I want to read it so it's my show. I get to do it. Here we go. Nobody's telling you anything. Otherwise here's an actual quote from the court filing. You unmasks lawyers. Here's the quote, stunning events over the last week, however, have revealed that the misrepresentations regarding monetizable daily. Active users were only one component of a broader conspiracy among Twitter Executives to deceive the public, its investors and the government about the dysfunction at the heart of the company. I just come on. That is That's a lot. There's there's no hyperbole there. Let's move on. Oh, we do. We have to, I was want to talk about Elon Musk. So no, I'm so tired of Elon Musk. So to stakeholders rule, here's an interesting one. So, we talked about in the past, how a lot of companies are leaving Chicago. We don't really know why, but three of the big ones. Citadel Boeing caterpillar or leaving Chicago for, for other places. Once going, Miami one's going to Virginia one's going to Texas. So that's seems like we do know why. When you look at that, that looks like a whoa no taxes, no taxes, no taxes and tie woke Exodus but now the CEO McDonald is actually coming out and saying he's got some inside information. This is Crimson ski the CEO of McDonald's. He says workers are hesitant to return to the company. Chicago headquarters over concerns that crime in the area is soaring. Three said he said in particular, employees are reluctant to ride mass transit in order to commute to work. Wow, that's tough. He's also said, this is a quote. It's more difficult for me to recruit a new employee to McDonald's to join us in Chicago, than it was in the past. And I wonder Matt is that because of Chicago or because of your shity company, which do you think is it it probably has something to do with the culture of harassment? I mean I can't like about this is a question in the interviews. I didn't see that one. I but this is a first I this is a weird one. This is like I don't know how to categorize this but I don't he's not really backing up with any proof but he's basically just calling out the city for crime. I just think the whole thing is funny to me. Because where do you think most? Drug dealer criminal types. Go after a good like good score. Good heist. Good. Like Texas. They don't have to pay taxes. So I think they go to the McDonald's drive-thru and Chicago. That's where I think they go. Oh, look at you. So there actually this is just I don't know how to like talk about this. I'm like maybe what if the score was Robbing a different McDonald's. How does McDonald's account for that? Do we give him credit for staying Chicago? Do we do we land-based him for, for calling out the entire city for for people who are afraid to ride the subway which we which is probably not true. Actually, I'm sure ridership is not going down but I don't know. Do you care about this? Look, I think the bigger risk here is that the Chicago Mafia of board members, like Abbott Labs and McDonald's fishing. They're diminishing in power. That's the bigger story. It's like right now. Where are they going to go? They don't want to be on the board of the Chicago Opera anymore, where they gonna go. They're Gonna disperse. That's that might be the the best removal of groupthink by just moving them someplace else. And the good news is that the crime crime stats, out of Miami is actually zero. There's no crime in Miami. Know, I heard never heard that. It's 0. They're also, if you buy water front property now, it'll be really close to the water in the next couple of years. So it's it's good time up next and stakeholders rules this goofy story, meta employees have criticized, the companies plans to introduce hot desking at its offices. So Facebook Instagram, The there they want a trial. They want to trial a new workplace experience that makes staff book desks before they arrive at the office. But here's why I included this story, Matt. Here's a quote, I want you to help me with this, One meta employee said, can we just cut the bullshit and call it cost cutting? Nobody is buying this new experience and then he said, Nobody is buying this new experience. See words, C. Okay. He said this new experience, sea star star star. How do I explain this? I don't know what's the swear. I don't know what the, what does he saying? He's hugging is literally blocking out here. It's an epithet for a female body part, isn't it? I mean, really nobody is buying this new experience Seward. What does he saying? What is happening here? Help me. I think it is. Well, it's I mean it's either that or what what? I don't understand what they're blocking out here, what is the square? This is what I really want to know. I love I like that. The story really has to do with that has nothing to do with the story. He was like this. I don't even know which c word it is. You went past hot desking. Like that's a hot box. Like what is did you imagine? Could you imagine your old job going in and every day you have to like sign out a new desk. What a terrible experience that is your testing, literally the worst experience. The only the joy that you have is when you get through the gauntlet of humans that you don't want to talk to. Yes. Get to the desk that you're going to sit at all day and hopefully not get out of to avoid, talking to people on the way out or moving around, not to mention the fart pillow. That is your 600 dollar desk chair. Do you really want to share that with everybody? I mean, This is literally the worst idea I've ever heard of. I expect more out of Zuck. I know we make fun of Zach, but I actually expect more out of him. I'm the hot desks available in the metaverse. Also, do you have to reserve that? Again, I want to know what this is. Nobody is buying this new experience, c word. I just don't understand, just gotta search for search for every variation of c word. You can think of with the that headline and someone printed it, And finally, in stakeholders rule, PayPal, CEO. Dan. Schulman is issuing an ultimatum to the Phoenix Suns. He saying in light of the findings of the NBA's investigation. We will not renew our sponsorship. Should Robert server remain involved with the sun's organization after serving his suspension. Wow, is Peter Thiel, pissed about that. That's his old company. It sounds pretty woke. It doesn't really woke. Me? What you should support the races, right? Because it's his, it's his, because it's his company and, and all opinions are valid. Like, you can't write races opinions are just opinions. You can't discriminate against them. Yeah. Plus what about all the races against the white people now? Yeah. Yeah. I mean terrible racism. That like no one talks about how much racism there is against white. People are majority of people and these days especially a straight white man, it's just not easy. It's it's like everybody wants to show that we've had for 10,000 years and they just keep crab called it. Okay, let's go over dystopia. Here's the headline, Disney. Okay, I really just call this one. I don't like care about the metaverse. I don't care about Disney and this I just like, the way this, this was reported. This is our, the British press. I just like this. Disney bets The Mouse House on virtual reality. Beleaguered CEO. Bob chapek reveals plans, for a lifestyle experience metaverse that were recreate their theme parks online. I like this Belieber bald. I love this. Yeah. But he is going through a mid CEO crisis, though. The beard gives it away. Like he looks like true. Yeah, that's it. Is that is a beleaguered man. Really true. I like this. I like this. This tweet that the article highlighted this is from Juan Carlos, Bagnell He's got the little blue check mark on Twitter too and some guy he said, Dan Disney just say it, direct like that. 90% of the human population is too poor to visit our Parks but hopefully some are less poor enough to own VR goggles and ride our rides in a metaverse clone. I don't know. I like that. It is very expensive. Have you ever been you've never been to Disney? I was forced to go. No. But the VR goggles can't be too cheap either though, right? Yeah, but they're cheaper than that all. So the whole point of the park was the physical experience of the park, and if you make a metaverse park, then why would why do you need a park? I don't know. Take it up with believer balls. You need to grow a bigger beard. Okay, let's move on to our blowhard index. A couple of stories I like here. First of all, this is genius. How was Credit Suisse thinking of getting on of its terrible hole of just being a horrible company that everybody hates Matt. I got easy solution, got a plan. Just change its name to the first Boston. That's it. That's the plan. Oh, there you go. Reasons it wants to change. Its name in the US. The first Boston. Everybody likes Boston. Like they like copy they like Larry Bird. Come on, it's genius. It's look if you look around if you're if you're one of the worst companies. Yeah. In the world and you've been looking around and everybody else is just changing their name and then you forget that they were the worst company in the world. It's not the worst strategy know it's funny about it is that first Boston used to exist? Yeah. We're just going backwards now. And secondly in the blowhard index I had to I had to do it a business inside his reporting on summer travel chaos. 22 finally jumped the shark or the fish or whatever. So for the pun here's the headline two Southwest workers looked after a passenger's pet fish for four months after it was banned from her flight. That's a story. Okay, let's move on. Finally a business pants laying in. We have a business pants fan. Her name is Melinda French Gates, really? Yep. She's calling out the lack of comprehensive paid family medical. Leave in the US and she said, electing more women and people of color would help fix this. She says, there are too many men with seats of power, still on Capitol Hill. Business pants fan. There you go, Melinda French Gates. Matt The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently found the world won't reach gender equality until at least 21.08. How about that? I like that will all be dead by the time we get to gender equality. Yeah, 21. Oh wait, the new 2015. I mean you got at least like that. You gotta give them credit for that 218. That's a good projection, although I'm about to prove her wrong. I'm sorry. All right, that's a good transition. Let's let's get over to our or a nerd alert. Boom. All right. Look, this isn't so much. Usually, I read a paper and I give you some findings that nerds made and and then I explained it to you because you don't get it. This time, we're going to do something different because I read this paper and this requires classroom discussion. So here there's actually been a series of paper. I'm gonna highlight two or three and then I have some discussion questions, you ready? Yeah. The concept is. The robo director, an AI corporate director. Are you serious? This is a real thing. It's a real discussion amongst corporate laws and dollars and this isn't something that we thought of this isn't like the medicine. This is not a game. This isn't, it's not really us Making Believe It's Not silliness here. There's a paper from July 2022 called the role and legal implications of autonomy. In AI driven. Boardrooms, yeah, there is, yeah, and a driven boardroom, the paper. I did a deep dive in is from November of 2021, but it's getting published soon. I believe it's called the impact of AI on corporate law and corporate governance. And there was a paper I found as far back as 2017 called Insight rise of the robo director, I missed this the real story is, how do we miss this? So I want to give you some quotes from the paper impact of AI in corporate law in corporate governance. And then open this up for some discussion questions. You ready for this? Okay. Version of me is ready for this. The actual version of me doesn't care. Well, they actual version of you. Super pumped. It's in 2014. Yeah, a Hong Kong Venture Capital firm deep knowledge Ventures. Claimed to have appointed vital, which stood for validating investment tool for advancing Life Sciences to its board. And credited with helping to avoid being Hoodwinked by hype when making investment decisions, okay? The first board member that we know of that was a machine was in 2014 at a venture capital firm and in the robo director was named vital. The robot director. The acronym was named vital. Yeah, vital this was from the annals of business pants. This is not an onion article, this is not something we covered. This is not I mean we were both making ESG ratings I think at this point so I can't believe it didn't come up. Now the big question hinges on our, can you give this is a private company doing a crazy thing for sure? Public, you know, for marketing purposes mostly, right? They might actually use it maybe mostly marketing. The rest of the paper hinges on is an AI, can an AI actually be a director, what are the legal liabilities? What are the standards? What are all these things be? And they point out that as an outlier position, the UK and Hong Kong permit legal persons to be appointed as directors. So, in the US a legal person is a company, right? So already, you have something that isn't a person fetus if you're, if you're now defeated. Yeah, now, a fetus. In fact, it was only a few years ago that most countries said, you can't be a minor and be on the board. So this is that rise, what you're really saying, this is the rise of the robo feed is directors at caterpillar, I can't wait for that. That's gonna be amazing. Okay, they said the big, there's a big risk here. Outside a little legal liabilities and responsibilities and stuff like that. The big risk actually is a very human risk and they call it AI Dazzle. Which is when directors become passive in relation to the exercise of their judgment due to being unduly deferential to the insights of their AI counterpart. Wait, is this is this like the argument and baseball about having a robot umpire called balls? And Strikes is that similar? I don't even know. What's, what are you talking about? Hey, I'm saying, what are you even talking about the director? Not only. So what happens? Not only are these These papers like consumed with the idea of like, what's the legality of putting AI on the board? Should you do it? How it's the legality? But then once it's there, yeah, would everybody just defer to it? Whatever he just be like, well, the robot says we should do that. Let's do it. Yeah, right. The robot says we should get three large pizzas. The robot says that we're spending too much on coffee and Gus should actually just Bruce some from yesterday's pot. First of all, can we move around of Applause for another? Uh, if another, another instance of Corporations, finding a way to avoid putting more women on their board, can we? Well, we'll get to that. Okay, because I'm super impressed. I never thought about this. Why we don't need women? If we can get robots, here is what the the paper rounds out. This is near the end of the paper. It says, quote, helpfully AI is excellent. A counteracting unconscious bias involving Ai and decision-making can reduce agency costs through addressing internal bias board Independence and groupthink issues except that. Effectively the end of this article. Argues that AI is diversity. That's effectively what the fact that like, who programmed this AI though? Like, whoa. That's why guys, it's mostly ammo were here. She would mention this would be the perfect time to mention systemic bias, right? Algorithmic bias. All right. Why am I laughing? I don't even know. This is how this whole thing is. So silly, robot directory, I keep Here are some discussion questions. We don't have to get into all of them but I want to throw them out there. Question, number one would be over under does AI achieve legal personhood. Black people did. I mean, clearly, yes, right. Clear answer, there's yes, of course, that's obvious. Okay. Because this um now a certain sound like I'm not a big Star Wars guy but I do remember that the the white people, what are they called? The Stormtroopers, they're clones, right? They're and yes I'm building your big army, right? So, yeah, I think that this is the next step for the GOP because they're all their voters may be dying off. So this is a great way to build up the ranks. So yes I'm saying the Clone them Robo personhood. It will come much faster than than you know, women's suffered. Yes. And which case it once they have sort of legal status that quickly. And we've already established that counteracting unconscious bias and groupthink is like a benefit. Sure. The question has to be asked, do we run out of black people or Hispanics or women or the lgbtq community to busy? Like do we run out of people to do counteracting unconscious bias and groupthink? Do we run out of people for that? Will there be a day where World Wells Fargo CEO? Charles Scharf said that they're just aren't enough Robo director's, not qualified ones. That can't find a qualified. Robot directly anyway. That can't be true because once you have one qualified when you can just clone that one, right? That's yeah, you can just copy paste, control C control V, right? Everybody knows what's going on anymore. I don't understand. So we can get, we can do robo directors but we can't get Labour representation on the board. No, employee Representatives. No, no. But I do have a question about about it, because if you're an ESG, Raider, what percentage of AI robot directors is correct for diversity's sake. Do you need 20% Robo directors? Do you need 15%? You need one. Just one, that seems really discriminatory in a room full of like 10 white, guys. You get one, robot isn't the theory that this robot director was just be a genius and just, every, every decision is correct. It isn't that why it's creating AI dazzle? Because It. I dazzled. You can make anything if the world. Why do we need to plan it? If we can have a role of, why can't we just eliminate Earth, and just replace it with a robo director. Can I ask you if it can vote in the alternative democracy? Shouldn't it be able to vote in the Political democracy. Like more importantly, will it have will have double voting rights? Well have what kind of what class robot directors? Can you imagine that? And can you imagine that the the death grip it'll have on that like when you on a 85 year old director has been there for 40 Years. It'll have one is when that directors trying to vote against it it'll just apply some, some Robo, death risks, Robo, pressure life. Look, I think this is the fact that this is even a debate is relatively comical when we can't put a black person or a woman on a board without being called woke. We're already talking about solving the problems. Well, adding diversity, this does. This is with the robot. This is science. That's all I got. That's my nerd alert. That's a lot. That's a lot to think about. So take those things, discuss it with your friends, and tell us what you think, come back to us at Steamroller us. I'm at moscati. We're free float media. And you can listen to this show every single day of your life and let us know. Robo director's, what is the right percentage of the board? That should be Robo directors? That's all I got. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Good. Bye.