This Week’s Show

Contents

• 02m24s Open the pod bay doors, Hal
• 06m46s AI scrapes Grub Street
• 14m06s Trump 47 report card: (1)
• 19m14s Trump 47 report card: (2)
• 23m00s Trump 47 report card: (3)
• 28m29s Cooking the data at Harvard
• 30m34s The LGBTQ+ Community Month
• 31m51s Smartphones are a human right
• 33m15s Signoff with Carousel

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners and readers. This is of course your provocatively genial host John Derbyshire with commentary on the news this penultimate day of May 2025.

Just a wee housekeeping note before we start. I took my signoff music last week from a YouTube clip of two Chinese ladies playing Chinese music on Chinese instruments in a big public square. The people passing by in the square who stopped to listen didn’t look Chinese; neither did the buildings around the square. I surmised that it was a European city, and noted that someone in the YouTube comment thread thought it might be Munich.

A friend more resourceful than myself emailed in to tell me he had copied and pasted a couple of screenshots from that YouTube clip into Grok. Grok, he said, seems confident the video is shot in Milan, identifying the Castello Sforzesco and the Piazza del Duomo. Thank you, Sir!

Grok describes itself as, quote, “your truth-seeking AI companion for unfiltered answers with advanced capabilities in reasoning, coding, and visual processing,” end quote. In other words, it’s an Artificial Intelligence chatbot. Let’s have a starting segment on AI.

02 — Open the pod bay doors, Hal.     AI sure can be handy, as my friend’s use of Grok there illustrates. I’ve never engaged with Grok myself, though. In fact I confess that I’ve never engaged with AI at all.

That’s a bit odd considering that my favorite reading matter in my late-childhood, young-teen years was science fiction, which of course had plenty of smart robots in its stories. It’s even odder when I recall that the first opinion piece I had published, back in my 1960s college days, contained the following prediction, quote:

The problem of the twenty-first century will be the death of science, in the sense of man’s achievements through science. Advances in automated labour and information-processing will result in men having nothing much to do but gaze in awe and incomprehension at the works of the superior intelligences we are creating.

End quote.

AI still scares me. Perhaps adolescent Derb read too much sci-fi. Or perhaps we really should be scared.

If you put the words “Artificial Intelligence” into the YouTube search bar a high proportion of the results you get are AI scaremongering. The first time I noticed that I wasn’t surprised, let alone scared. YouTube leans hard towards negativity. I guess that brings in the clicks. That’s especially true if you search by nation.

Russia is facing a demographic collapse; China has already had one; South Africa is collapsing. Britain? Fuhgeddaboutit. That, apparently, is what people like to read. I’ll admit I get a tingle out of it myself, even while the angel sitting on my right shoulder is whispering: South Africa’s been collapsing for twenty years, but it never happens. China’s been around for four thousand: they’re not going anywhere …

The clips you get from putting “Artificial Intelligence” into the YouTube search bar have an extra dimension of scariness, though, in that a high proportion of the scariest speakers and interviewees in the clips are themselves pioneers in the development of AI: Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Ilya Sutskever, Max Tegmark, Stuart Russell, and yes, Elon Musk.

Browsing through some of those clips, in fact, I turned up one in which actual AI bots were asked about the prospects for homo sapiens surviving the AI revolution. Their first estimate was, quote, “I’d give humanity a 30 percent chance of surviving,” end quote. Later in the clip we were offered revised estimates, but none of them was good.

If all those pioneers and experts in the field, and the AI itself, think we are doomed, perhaps it’s time to stock up that bunker under the back yard.

03 — AI scrapes Grub Street.     As a footnote to that, here’s a phrase you may not be familiar with: “content provider.” In the last few years it’s been elevated somewhat to “content creator,” but to-may-to, to-mah-to.

I’m very familiar with the phrase “content provider,” having actually been one for forty-some years. The phrase is useful for fending off enquiries about the work — I mean, the work of content provision — that I don’t want to answer. Asked about VDARE.com’s business plan, for example, or, further back, office politics at National Review, I would smile innocently and murmur: “Sorry, don’t know: I’m just a content provider.”

Content providing is an ancient and honorable profession. Homer, if he actually existed, was a content provider. So was Shakespeare; so were the translators of the Bible (although they were generating new content from content provided to them by earlier content providers).

What’s this got to do with Artificial Intelligence? Well, content provision is a form of work, albeit a low one by comparison with heart surgery or the building of cathedrals. A worker should be paid for his labor. Before settled copyright law came up in the nineteenth century, a content provider was paid — if he was paid — just once, by contract with the printer or bookseller.

Nowadays there is a complex body of law concerning a content provider’s rights regarding the copying, distribution, and translation of the content he’s provided, the rights sometimes limited by “fair use” rules and usually lapsing after some set number of years. I still get a small but welcome check for content I provided twenty years ago.

Now here comes AI. How does it work? By scraping. That’s the word they use, scraping. It means using specialized software — scraping tools — to extract and interpret data from the internet. There are many, many such scraping tools with names right off the kindergarten brochure: Octoparse, Diffbot, Scrapy of course, ScrapingBee, AnyPicker, Apify, Gumloop, ScrapeStorm, …

Here’s the thing, though. A lot of that data being scraped is content provided by, yes, content providers to some publishing outlet. The texts of entire books — perhaps millions of them — are on the internet.

I don’t think you’ll be astounded to hear that the content providers who provided that content are not being remunerated by the AI firms who are scraping it up — copying it — for use by their bots.

With a personal publication record going well back into the last century, AI scraping has probably left me several thousand dollars poorer than I ought to be. Copyrighted content that I’ve provided has been stolen by — to name just one billionaire thief — Elon Musk. Lawsuit!

In fact lawsuits are under way. The inspiration for this segment of my podcast was an op-ed in todays’ New York Post by Danielle Coffey, CEO of something called the News/Media Alliance. Quote from that Op-Ed, edited quote:

To protect their work, over a dozen members of the News/Media Alliance recently sued [AI platform] Cohere, Inc. for unauthorized use of their content. They joined other publishers, including News Corp and The New York Times, that are suing various AI companies to enforce their rights.

Some in Big Tech are beginning to recognize the problem. We’ve seen a proliferation of licensing agreements in which AI companies pay publishers to use their content, over the last year. A News/Media Alliance collective is currently licensing content at scale.

But without reinforced legal protections, bad actors will continue to exploit publishers and creators — undermining America’s creative industries to further tech’s commercial interests.

End quote.

Content provision has never been much of a living, other than for a few big names or strokes of luck. Sure, Dr Johnson got fifteen hundred guineas for his Dictionary — worth $300,000 today — but that was after years of poverty.

Unless the lawyers pull off some big, permanent courtroom victories, content provision will be even less of a living in the Age of AI than it currently is.

04 — Trump 47 report card: (1).     I make today, May 30th, the 131st day of the Trump 47 presidency. How’s our guy doing?

A mixed report from me. On immigration, I’ll grade A-minus. The minus is for that dumb investor’s gold card, which with any luck will never become reality. Trump has delivered elsewhere on immigration, though. Federal law-enforcement officers are actually enforcing federal laws, to screams of outrage from the open-borders nation-wreckers.

He’s even going after student visas, as I’ve been urging him to. Until recently he was wont to blather about stapling a green card to the diploma of every foreign student who graduated from one of our colleges. We haven’t heard that from him recently … or at any rate, I haven’t. Perhaps he’s been spending time with Stephen Miller.

Once again, repeat after me, please: Higher education is a precious, finite national resource. Our own citizens should have first call on it.

In this, as in everything else he’s trying to do, Trump is being resisted by our lefty judiciary. Thursday this week, in fact, a federal judge in Massachusetts — an Obama appointment, natch — issued an injunction blocking Trump’s efforts to freeze Harvard University’s extravagant admissions of foreign students — currently more than 27 percent of students enrolled.

Law professor Jonathan Turley has coined the phrase “chronic injunctivitis” for this swelling flood of “national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration.” These are district courts, mind. Their proper scope is ruling on whether Daisy Dickerson’s parking ticket is valid or not. They have no business rapping the President’s knuckles over the issuance of visas.

On the fuss over tariffs, I’ll grade B-plus. The case for major tariff reform seems to me sound, but I think Trump went at it too fast and loud. A slower and more deliberate approach would have worked better.

I do understand the case for speed. Congress is on a knife-edge and the mid-terms come next year. On seriously disturbing issues like this, there needs to be time for the dust to settle. Sure; but I just think the President was too fast, too abrupt.

Had you ever heard of the Court of International Trade before this week? Me neither; but on Wednesday a three-judge panel of that court tried to stop the implementation of Trump’s tariffs. Latest I have on this is that an appellate court has just put a hold on that ruling, so the tariffs will go ahead while the lawyers argue it out.

As Glenn Reynolds wrote in a column on Tuesday, quote:

Clearly, a significant portion of the federal judiciary is hostile to Trump’s policies and is happy to thwart them in any way it can.

End quote.

As Glenn also points out, though, the doctrine of separation of powers was never intended to mean that unelected judges have final authority on every point of policy. If they did, in what sense would we still be a democracy? Presidents from Thomas Jefferson on have been defying judicial rulings. I hope Trump will join the list.

05 — Trump 47 report card (2).     Foreign policy? I wish we didn’t have one. Can’t we please pull out of NATO, Mr President?

In the matter of the war between the world’s two most corrupt white nations, our President has, to put it gently, not distinguished himself. Vladimir Putin has treated him with frank contempt. Putin has grudgingly allowed that if negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are satisfactory, he might then agree to include Trump in the next round.

Translated from the Russian that means: “Don’t call us, we’ll let you know.” Trump is fuming; Putin is sniggering quietly to himself and his aides while stepping up the war.

He seems to be getting plenty of support from China in the war. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out long-term. China will of course want something in return for her trouble. How about … Siberia?

The other war — the one Israel is fighting against Iran and Iran’s proxies, all openly dedicated to Israel’s annihilation — that war is currently revolving around Iran’s nuclear weapons.

They don’t actually have any. At least, that’s what we’re told, and we can only hope the intelligence is good. Iran’s been working on nuke development for at least twenty years, and it’s not that difficult.

The Trump administration at any rate doesn’t want Iran to nuke up. They’re in negotiations with the Ayatollahs to open up the country’s nuclear research labs to full inspection, in return for us lifting trade sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds.

Last week, we’ve been told, Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and warned him against striking Iran’s nuke-development sites.

My guess is that Netanyahu will consider that restraint a fair price to pay for being allowed to continue his war against Hamas in Gaza. Whether Trump sees it the same way is not clear. Relations between the two leaders are … cool, especially since Trump backed off from helping Israel fight the Houthis of Yemen, who are still lobbing missiles at Israeli targets.

My grade for foreign policy is B-plus. The B is for us still being in NATO, which Trump used to tell us he himself was against. The plus is for zero American combat casualties in this administration so far — I don’t think we lost anyone in the Campaign against the Houthis.

06 — Trump 47 report card (3).     On presentation, I’ll grade Trump 47 a plain A.

To be honest, I don’t watch the President’s public performances much. That A grade is based pretty much entirely on his Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, which I thought a good stirring speech.

It had some Trumpish braggadocio in it, to be sure, but no surprise there. After praising our country, he called it, quote:

… a republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years. That was a hard four years we went through.

Who would let that happen? People pouring through our borders, unchecked, people doing things that are indescribable and not for today to discuss. But the republic that is now doing so very well …

End quote.

If they’re not for today to discuss, why mention them, Sir? But hey, that’s Trump for you.

Later in the speech the President congratulated himself on the 2026 soccer World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics both being scheduled to happen in his term of office, along with next year’s celebration of 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. He added, quote:

Can you imagine? I missed that four years, and now look what I have. I have everything. Amazing the way things work out. God did that. I believe that too. God did it.

End quote.

The audience laughed and applauded. They didn’t seem to mind. Whether or not God minded, I shall not venture to speculate.

I minded somewhat. A Memorial Day address in the national cemetery, with loved ones of those who died for our country present, along I guess with some veterans who were maimed in the nation’s service — a speech given in such a place, on such an occasion, should be solemn all the way through.

That’s Trump for you, though, warts and all. Before I could form my features into a proper frown I recalled the quality of national leadership we had this time last year, and the frown turned into a smile of relief.

As a lover of numbers, I did do a full wince when the President referred to, quote, “us, an American nation, 325 million strong,” end quote.

Way back in my monthly Diary for October 2016 I looked forward to the day when the U.S. population would reach one-third of a billion, 333,333,333. I estimated that day would be January 25th, 2020. I think in fact it was slightly later, in February 2021. Whatever: On Monday this week, Memorial Day, our population was just short of 342 million. It had passed the 325 million mark about eight years ago.

Please, Mr President, if you’re going to quote numbers at us, try to make sure they’re the right numbers. If you need a fully numerate assistant to help out your speechwriters with these issues, I can make myself available at a few days’ notice.

But for those few slight negativities, I would have graded the speech A-plus. Room for improvement, Sir.

07 — Miscellany.     And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.

Imprimis:  Back to Harvard for a moment. Last week a professor at Harvard Business School was stripped of her tenure and fired for having fabricated data in a study she published. She was the first Harvard professor to lose her tenure since the 1940s.

The defenestrated professor there was 47-year-old Francesca Gino. She’d been a permanent faculty member at Harvard since 2010.

Would you like to know her field of specialization? Wait for it: … her research focused on honesty and ethical behavior.

The particular study for which she cooked the data claimed to show that requiring individuals to sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of a form rather than at the end significantly boosts honest responses.

You might further be interested to know that Professor Gino was, before she fell under suspicion, one of Harvard’s highest-paid employees, actually the fifth highest from 2018 to 2020. In that last year she pulled down $1,049,532, according to Wikipedia.

What portion of that salary was paid out of grants to Harvard from the American taxpayer? We have not been told.

Item:  June is of course Pride Month. Quote from its website, quote:

[A] vibrant and inclusive celebration that honors the LGBTQ+ community, their history, achievements, and ongoing struggle for equality.

End quote.

That gives me an opportunity to once again promote my call for dumping the ugly, clumsy, and all-too-mockable expression “the LGBTQ+ community” for the much briefer, neater, and totally non-abusive alternative “the prouds.”

Alternatively, of course, those organizing the festivities could follow their own logic and rename Pride Month as “The LGBTQ+ Community Month.”

Item:  It isn’t just in the U.S.A. that the judiciary leans heavily to the crazy left. Things are just as bad in Britain.

In March 2022 the High Court of that nation (or former nation) ruled that it was unlawful for border law enforcement to seize the mobile phones of illegal alien boat people arriving across the English Channel from France. It was, the court ruled, a violation of the invader’s human rights.

That was three years ago. There’s a new Border Security Bill currently before Parliament, actually going to the upper chamber — that’s the House of Lords — next week. I haven’t been able to find out whether it includes a clause restoring the right of border officers to seize invaders’ phones. If anyone can enlighten me on this, or knows an AI bot that might, I’d be much obliged.

08 — Signoff.     And that’s it, boys and girls. Thank you yet again for your time and attention.

Yes, the VDARE Foundation is still with us, and planning (I think) for a conference at the castle in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia later this year. Please give us your support by subscribing to Peter Brimelow’s Substack account, or with a check payable to the VDARE Foundation at P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759; and you can support me personally by earmarking that check with my name, or by any of the other options listed at my personal website. You can also support me indirectly by subscribing to Chronicles magazine, who publish my stuff. Thank you!

To sign off with, here’s something a day or two ahead of the calendar. It’s an old favorite of mine, though. Just listen to the word-play in the lyrics; these guys really knew their business.

There will be more from Radio Derb next week.