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--:-- Host: 28 countries, including the U.S. and China, met for the world's first artificial intelligence safety summit in London this week. My personal opinion is that AI is at least 80% likely to be beneficial and perhaps 20% dangerous. What did the leaders agree on and how will the U.S. regulate AI? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's November 4th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- Host: Israel's war on Hamas is causing a massive political rift inside the Democratic Party. I truly believe this in my heart. Americans want to cease fire. They want it to stop. They clearly don't speak for the party at all. I mean, you're talking about a very small group of extremists. And a pediatrician who pioneered trans treatments on minors is now speaking out about its shortcomings and dangers. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Host: A number of nations, including the U.S. and China, met in London this week to address the risks of artificial intelligence technology. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. So, Megan, delegates from 28 nations, as well as many tech leaders, including Elon Musk, met in London. They came out with an international declaration that ostensibly addresses the dangers of AI. What did it say?
--:-- Megan Basham: So this agreement specifically deals with the risks that AI poses when it comes to things like deep fakes, the ability to disseminate biased information or even disinformation, also the potential for upending economies by replacing human workers. And then they even brought up AI's capability to operate weapons of mass destruction without human oversight. In fact, Musk sounded a very pessimistic note as he was arriving to the summit. There is some chance that above zero that AI will go as well. I think it's low, but there's some chance. So we are talking about some very real dangers here, but I think the statement itself was pretty general and it didn't offer a lot of proposals for how governments might regulate these things.
--:-- Host: Morning Wire spoke with Yael Osaski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, about this summit. And he said that at this point, it feels like it's more about optics and serious, impactful policies. We're not really at a point where we can even evaluate the technology. It's so new. So realistically, I think this is a way that the governments can pat themselves on their backs. They can go back to their citizens and say, look, we work together on AI. This is just kind of their opening salvo. I don't really see it doing too much apart from demonstrating that they are willing and active to use the force of law regulation to go after AI, even as it's beginning.
--:-- Megan Basham: And how about the executive order that Biden just signed on Monday? Does that go any further in addressing the risks of AI?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, it was definitely more concrete, let's say. It requires AI companies to share the results of their safety tests with the federal government and it empowers the Commerce Department to offer some oversight for authentication processes. Think of things like watermarking AI-generated content to address that deep fake issue and also that potential disinformation. And then some measures did involve those privacy protections, including collecting data on how these technologies are using personal information that's obtained through commercially available data so that some better safeguards can be built. And then the order also calls for studies on how the government might mitigate AI's disruption on the job market. But a lot of this was announcing new government grants for research rather than putting in place regulations and maybe addressing some of those issues that Musk brought up.
--:-- Megan Basham: So many tech experts are saying that this is more of a broad first step. Now, one concern that a lot of people have brought up is how research shows that ChatGPT and other AI programs display a distinct left-wing bias. Did the AI summit get into that at all? Does Biden's executive order address it?
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, you know, and I'll just say I've run into that myself when I asked ChatGPT to provide citations for studies that I knew existed on the rate of false rape claims. And it replied that it would be irresponsible to give me that information because it might minimize the seriousness of sexual assault. So that was pretty strange. And the AI summit didn't really get into that. Osaski says that's probably because other nations don't value the principle of free speech in the same way that we as Americans do. So it wasn't a top concern at this summit. As for the Biden order, it really didn't take up the issue either. In fact, it included language, and I'm quoting, about addressing algorithmic discrimination and ensuring that AI advances equity. So some conservatives like Chris Ruffo say that this signals that the administration is planning to, quoting from him, embed the principles of CRT and DEI into every aspect of AI. Ososky says that's an issue that the free market might be able to mitigate. Well, the free market will probably also include a lot of lawsuits. Just this week, we saw Scarlett Johansson suing an AI app for using her likeness.
--:-- Host: As the war in Gaza goes on, debate over America's role in the conflict is raging in Washington, with President Biden caught between a growing intraparty battle over support for Israel. Here with more is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. Hey, Cabot, so a bitter political battle taking place in Washington among Democrats right now. Give us some context.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, the last month has seen a major rift form within the Democrat Party, driven by American support of Israel. When Hamas first launched their attack and President Biden came out with unequivocal support for the Jewish state, there was scattered anti-Israel sentiment from some Democrat leaders. But for the most part, the party did seem unified in standing with Israel against Hamas. However, over the last few weeks, as the war in Gaza has escalated, we've seen growing backlash from an increasingly vocal faction of the party, especially progressive lawmakers on the far left. Squad members Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush and AOC, along with a handful of other influential members, have started to go after President Biden publicly now, demanding he urge a ceasefire and also voting against House resolution that condemned Hamas and expressed solidarity with Israel.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Just to give you an idea of how bitter the divide here has become, when Democrat rep Josh Godheimer called those members despicable for their vote Indiana Andre Carson called him a coward and a punk and actually appeared to threaten him on camera. If he wants to play some kind of tough guy against it we can handle it like gentlemen and we can get into something else.
--:-- Host: Wow, so threatening to get physical there, not the sort of thing you typically hear from elected officials. Right, and look, this debate is not going away anytime soon. Now, we have seen far-left members break with their own party on a number of issues before, but the rest of the Democrat Party typically ignores them in those cases. That is not happening here, as rank-and-file members have been plenty vocal on their views of those far-left members, some accusing them of anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas sentiment. But it is worth noting, while the majority of Democrat lawmakers still appear to support Israel's war on Hamas, Democrat voters themselves appear far more divided. According to a recent poll from the Liberal Group Data for Progress, 80% of Democrat voters say the U.S. should call for a ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza.
--:-- Host: Now, critics of a ceasefire say that it'll only allow Hamas to regroup and launch another attack. They point to an interview this week in which a Hamas spokesman vowed to, quoting here, repeat the October 7 massacre one million times if we need to, as proof that a ceasefire would only benefit one side. To that point, President Biden has repeatedly shut down the idea of a ceasefire, saying Israel has a right to eliminate Hamas, but that stance appears to be putting him at odds with many of the Democrat base. All right, so let's get to voters. How could the Hamas-Israel conflict impact the president's re-election chances?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, it's becoming clear that Biden's handling of this conflict could well become a defining moment for its presidency and impact his odds of winning another term. And at the moment, that appears to be bad news for Biden. Even before this war broke out, his approval rating on foreign policy was underwater. And according to a new poll this week from American Pulse Research, 55% of Americans say the world is less safe since Biden took office, with just 25% saying it's safer. Another poll that garnered quite a bit of attention this week showed Biden's approval rating among Arab Americans plummeting to just 17%. For context, in 2020, he was around 60% with that demographic. That same survey found that support for a third-party candidate among the group more than quadrupled, from 4% to 17%. Now, while Arab Americans are not a massive voting bloc, those numbers could be crucial in battleground states like Michigan, which is home to nearly 200,000 Arab Americans.
--:-- Host: One of the physicians who helped pioneer transgender hormone treatments for children is now speaking out about the dangers. Finnish Dr. Ritakertu Kaltiala is warning about the rise of gender-affirming care in America in particular. Daily Wire investigative reporter Mairead Elordi is here with the details. So Mairead, who is this doctor, what are her credentials, and what's she saying?
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Hi, Georgia. So Dr. Kaltiala is the chief adolescent psychiatrist at Temperi University Hospital in Finland. In 2011, she was put in charge of the hospital's new youth gender clinic. So she was one of the first physicians in the world to lead a clinic devoted to gender-distressed youth. Even from the start, though, Kaltiala had concerns about the so-called affirming model of transgender treatment. Now she's warning about the dangers of affirming children's new gender identities and moving forward with medical intervention like puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: She wrote an op-ed in the Free Press this week discussing the concerns she has. Now, what are the specific concerns? Well, she has a number of them. She says that she was uncomfortable from the start with the idea that at her gender clinic they were being told to intervene in healthy functioning bodies simply on the basis of a young person shifting feelings about gender. When the youth gender clinic began services, Kaltiala said they expected to see a small number of boys who had persistently declared they were girls. But instead, they saw, quote, droves of patients, 90% of whom were girls aged 15 to 17, and many of them had severe psychiatric conditions. Some of the girls had family issues and many were on the autism spectrum. And many of the girls had suddenly announced their gender dysphoria in adolescence. Kaltiala said LGBT groups and the internet were behind some of this. She said the girls' parents, usually their mothers, had been told by someone from an LGBT organization that gender identity was their child's real problem. Or the child had seen something online about gender transition.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: So it sounds like she also believes there's some social contagion element to this. Right. Now, what kind of results did she see in her own clinic? Well, soon after her clinic began offering gender hormone treatments for youth, Kaltiala and her colleagues began to see that the, quote, miracle they'd been promised was not happening. In fact, the opposite was happening. The young people they were treating were not thriving, but their lives were deteriorating, which included the youth becoming socially isolated. Meanwhile, Kaltiala's colleagues in other countries were seeing the same trend, she said. And regarding that social contagion aspect you mentioned, in 2015, her gender clinic started to notice groups of teenage girls from the same areas arriving, telling the same stories about how they realized they were transgender. Some patients have even come back to Kaltiala's clinic saying they regret their gender transitions.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Kaltiala said that in the early years, her psychiatric department agreed to help transition about half the youth who came to the gender clinic. Now, though, that number has dropped to about 20 percent, she said. So what do they do with the other 80 percent who come in? Well, in 2016, Finland's two pediatric gender clinics changed their protocols. So currently, if a young patient has more urgent issues than gender dysphoria, the clinics refer them to another treatment, such as counseling. And as a reminder for our listeners, gender transitions for kids became popular in Europe several years before it caught on here in the U.S. Now, many countries in Europe have dialed back on child gender transitions. Medical associations in the U.S. generally still support child gender transitions, but some Republican-leaning states have outlawed hormone treatments and gender surgeries for kids.
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Right. There's been a huge amount of controversy here. Has Kaltialla weighed in at all on the U.S. politics around the issue?
--:-- Mairead Elordi: Yes. Even though she operates out of Finland, Kaltiala sounded the alarm specifically in her op-ed on American medicine pushing the affirming model of transgender services for children. She singled out the American Academy of Pediatrics, saying that that group has been actively hostile to her message. The AAP is the largest professional association for pediatricians in the country, and it has about 67,000 members. But the board's members responsible for establishing guidelines is a very small group. Kaltiala added that she's disturbed by how gender clinicians warn American parents that there's a much higher risk of suicide if they refuse to transition their child. She called it dishonest and extremely unethical and said suicide is very rare. Meanwhile, as a reminder of how common transgender identities are among children, an estimated 300,000 minors aged 13 to 17 identified as transgender as of last year.
--:-- Host: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire.
