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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): New census numbers show people continue to flock south while the blue state exodus persists. What's driving the interstate migration? And did your home state shrink or grow? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's New Year's Eve, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Artificial intelligence is writing everything from music to news stories. What does this new technology mean for consumers and flesh and blood creators? And it's a bird, it's a plane, it's not Henry Cavill. We discuss the future of the big screen's most lucrative and high-flying franchises. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): The latest census data shows that blue states experienced the largest population declines in 2022. By contrast, a number of red states are experiencing record growth. Here to break down the details is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, the biggest losers were the big blue states, New York, California, and Illinois. And then on the growth side, Florida led the pack, followed by Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina, and Tennessee. So you have to note that all of those are southern or southwestern states there.
--:-- Megan Basham: But some other interesting tidbits when you dig down into this data centers on the northwestern states like Oregon and Washington. So over the past 10 years, they pretty famously drew a lot of Americans looking for jobs in booming industries like tech. Think Amazon and Microsoft. Well, now both are losing population. In fact, Washington saw its first net decline in more than a decade. And then Colorado, another one of those more progressive states that was a big winner in the past, still saw some growth, but it has slowed down to a trickle.
--:-- Megan Basham: So big shifts in some of those previously booming blue states. Now, the headline here is that these numbers seem to suggest that a lot of this interstate migration is politically driven. Is that a fair assessment for most of these people?
--:-- Megan Basham: I think it is because there's just no getting away from the fact that the bluest of blue states like California and New York experience the steepest population drops. While states in the southern region that have much more conservative policies are experiencing explosive growth.
--:-- Megan Basham: And because of that, you're seeing things like the Wall Street Journal's editorial board calling this a blue state exodus. In particular, they're pointing to issues like strict COVID lockdowns and mandates. But there's also this question of how crime rates and an overall sense of disorder has really come to plague cities in some of these regions. Think homelessness, drug use, and theft that have become a rising problem.
--:-- Megan Basham: And these regions are also the ones that saw riots throughout 2020. And then of course you have to look at the high cost of living. Due in part to local tax policies, money does tend to go much further in cities like Dallas, Orlando, or Charlotte than it does in Los Angeles or Chicago.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then, of course, there's also the remote work revolution that the pandemic ushered in. A lot of Americans are now able to work from anywhere, so there's a lot more flexibility to move. And if you can keep your California salary and move to a red state where your money goes a lot further, that makes that option especially attractive.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then speaking of work, these red states tend to boast better employment rates. In November, Miami's unemployment rate was 1.8%. Compare that to New York, which was at nearly 6%. and Chicago and Los Angeles, which hovered around 5%.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham. Coming up, the growing impact of AI on our daily lives. In this interview, we discuss the growing influence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives and the potential risks and benefits of its increasing presence. If that line sounded a bit robotic, it's because a bot wrote it.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Here to discuss the surprising ways AI is infiltrating our daily lives is Daily Wire's Michael Whitaker.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Hey, Georgia. So the computational power humanity has at its disposal has grown exponentially over the last few decades. The phones most of us carry in our pockets are technically more powerful than the supercomputers NASA used during the Apollo missions.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: This information revolution has created an immense amount of wealth in entire sectors of the modern economy. But as computers are used in more and more ways, some observers have raised concerns that machines might displace human labor.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: So what are some of the most impressive things that AI is able to do right now? Well, you know how often websites will ask you to prove that you're actually a human? That's because right now bots make up between a quarter and half of all internet traffic.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: It's difficult to know exactly how many there are. That was a huge point of controversy back when Elon Musk purchased Twitter. These bots are often used to push spam, inflate follower counts, or amplify certain messaging.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Other bots can be weaponized in cyber attacks that can steal data or crash servers by overwhelming them with fake traffic. But it can also be used for more artistic purposes. Bots can be trained to create pictures, write stories, or even compose music.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: You hear that piece playing in the background? A computer program wrote that. On a phone. Now, how is the phone able to do that? With something called machine learning.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Computers used to require exact instructions to be able to do anything. But now computer scientists have found ways to write code that can analyze large sets of data and when given simple instructions figure out the rules of that data set and recreate them. It basically pattern recognition.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: But if a machine can be given a set of inputs and figure out the rules of the road, as we've seen with self-driving cars, why couldn't it learn the patterns of a classical composer or the basic rules of English composition?
--:-- Michael Whitaker: As a visual example, a popular new program called Lenza allows users to plug in selfies to the app, and it transforms them into avatars in a variety of artistic styles. Impressionist, film noir, anime, you name it.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Now, what about written content? How soon will we be able to replace a news reporter with a bot? Well, Georgia, I'm irreplaceable.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: As for other writers, it could still be a little while. Bots have been trained to write news articles, ad campaigns, and various kinds of copy. But while many of these can pass the Turing test, they have difficulty with nuance.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: KFC Germany had to put out an apology last month after a bot ran an advertisement encouraging customers to commemorate Kristallnacht with its cheesy chicken. Kristallnacht, for those who aren't aware, is the night of broken glass.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: It was a Nazi-led campaign of violence against Jews and Jewish businesses and is widely seen as the opening of the Holocaust. But the computer couldn't tell the difference between a solemn day of remembrance for a national horror and a holiday sale.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Still, AI can generate content very quickly. The New York Times recently highlighted a program called ChatGPT, which can respond to a variety of prompts. I told the software to write a story about Elon Musk and Donald Trump riding a donkey to Mars in the style of iambic pentameter. It did it in five seconds.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: And how did it turn out? It was pretty good. And we could see a lot more like it. A report by Europol earlier this year suggested that as much as 90% of online content could be AI generated by 2026.
--:-- Michael Whitaker: Humans would likely still play some role. AI can only manipulate all information. So while it could write the bulk of stories, reporters could focus on original investigations while adding a personalized rhetorical flair to copy.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): That was Daily Wire's Michael Whitaker. With Marvel and DC now accounting for a significant percentage of box office revenues, The stakes are higher than ever for who gets the coveted director's role as well as who plays the leads.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Joining us to discuss is Hollywood reporter Christian Toto, editor of the website Hollywood in Toto.
--:-- Christian Toto: All right, Christian, so Marvel and DC have become massive financial players in Hollywood. But with DC in particular, there seems to be a lot of chaos behind the scenes. Fill us in here. What's going on with this DC universe?
--:-- Christian Toto: You'd think a very successful movie studio and franchise wouldn't have those troubles, but here we are. And they are trying to rework the entire franchise or universe, as they called it in Comic-Con speak.
--:-- Christian Toto: And we've been learning a lot about Superman, at least the fate of Superman on the big screen. Henry Cavill, who's played him multiple times, was destined to be Superman once more. And that was after a cameo appearance in the Black Adam film.
--:-- Christian Toto: And then a few weeks later, we learned that, no, he will not be returning as Superman. They want to go in a new, younger direction. This is according to James Gunn, who's basically the new overlord of this entire DC franchise.
--:-- Christian Toto: So we don't know what Superman will look like. We don't know the actor involved. But we do know that something will be happening soon because he is, again, the icon, the franchise figure of this entire series.
--:-- Christian Toto: Well, for some reason, my wife is very interested in whether Cavill is coming back as Superman. Now, what about reports of the Black Superman series? And how does that impact this decision?
--:-- Christian Toto: Well in 2021 it was announced that there would be a Black Superman series that would be apart from the existing universe. No casting, no director, no real story involved here. But journalist and author Ta Coates was assigned to do the screenplay for this.
--:-- Christian Toto: Now usually with these projects there an announcement, and then you get the updates, casting news, director choices, maybe even publicity stills from the production. Nothing has happened since then.
--:-- Christian Toto: There was a little bit of news saying that the project is still going forth, but other than that, we know nothing about it. So it could be years away. And if there's going to be a separate Superman film, a younger Superman, can these two films coexist? Will one lap the other?
--:-- Christian Toto: So I think the future is rather murky at this point. Now, as you mentioned, James Gunn is taking over the DC films and steering that entire ship. What do we know about his plan so far? Has he laid out a vision for the next phase of films?
--:-- Christian Toto: Well, I don't think we know a lot about the plan itself. It can be said that James Gunn is a smart choice because he's been involved with other films of the genre, including Guardians of the Galaxy. So he knows what he's talking about. He knows this whole realm.
--:-- Christian Toto: So I think if you're going to pick someone to be in charge of it, good choice. But I think we know more about what's not happening. We're not getting Henry Cavill back as Superman, at least not in the near future. We're also not seeing a Wonder Woman 3. That was in production, or at least in discussion.
--:-- Christian Toto: There was a plot and there was a screenplay involved. That is not moving forward. And there's even suspicions that Gal Gadot, who seems so perfectly cast as Wonder Woman, may not proceed forward. We don't know. It just seems like there's a lot of chaos behind the scenes.
--:-- Christian Toto: And even things that seemed like sure things are suddenly up in the air. And just a quick note on that, there were supposed to be multiple cameos of superheroes in the upcoming Flash movie. That's a 2023 release coming this summer. But the cameo from Gal Gadot allegedly has been taken out of the movie.
--:-- Christian Toto: So why would they do that unless they were changing gears along the way? Now, the Marvel movies have really set the gold standard for creating successful films that fit into a larger plan, a cohesive universe. But it seems they're not performing quite as well at the box office.
--:-- Christian Toto: How has Marvel fared in recent years? Well, that sort of unbelievably successful model apparently was hard to duplicate because they've struggled in the last year or two. This is the phase four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they call it.
--:-- Christian Toto: And while there have been some successes at the box office, the numbers haven't been as big or robust as in the past. And there's been a lot of critical, I guess, attacks on the films or the fans have not been embracing them as robustly as previous models.
--:-- Christian Toto: And if you just look at the most recent films, what is the plan? They seem to be isolated stories with maybe a slight overlap here or there. It doesn't feel like something's come together that this new narrative at play.
--:-- Christian Toto: And that's what Marvel did initially. Of course, that ended with the Avengers films, including Infinity Wars and Endgame. That kind of capped that entire saga in often spectacular fashion. Of course, it made tons of money in the box office, but it felt very satisfying for fans.
--:-- Christian Toto: But this new round of films, Phase 4, who's to say what the direction is? It seems like a bunch of different stories with little rhyme or reason.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Christian, thanks for coming on. That was Hollywood reporter Christian Toto. Other stories we're tracking this week. The man being called the architect of the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced to 19 years in prison, the longest sentence thus far.
--:-- Host (Georgia Howe): Starting January 5th, the U.S. will require COVID tests for travelers arriving by air from China, Hong Kong, and Macau. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with more news you need to know.
