Office Hours: Can AI Help End Fake News? Advice to a Future Mother, & Being Rich and Anonymous

Scott discusses his thoughts on whether AI has the potential to be a real-time fact-checker. He then offers his advice on finding a solution to systemic issues hindering working mothers. He wraps up with an honest conversation about fame and happiness. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:56Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. First question.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Prof G Dog, this is Paul from Chicago, Illinois. Here's a thought. Could ChatGPT save us from social media and political rhetoric that's become unencumbered by facts? It doesn't seem like a technical stretch to deploy ChatGPT as a real-time fact-checker of sorts of every tweet or social media post. Perhaps instead of a blue check, Elon's engineers could work on a Pinocchio icon whose nose length correlates with an AI test of the accuracy of each tweet. I'm curious whether you think this is a practical application of AI or a Pollyannaish pipe dream. Cheers.

• 1:53Scott Galloway?

  Paul from Chicago, thanks so much for the thoughtful question. So just a few stats. Fact-checking organizations are building their own AI-driven tools to help deal with the proliferation of online misinformation. According to a 2020 Statista survey, 80% of US adults have consumed fake news and 38% have accidentally shared it. In 2020, NEWTRAL, the biggest fact-checking team in the EU, and its NEWTRAL spelled N-E-W-T-R-A-L, developed its multilingual AI language model Claim Hunter. Right? So serious fact-checking using AI. Developers use 10,000 statements to train the system to identify claims made by social media accounts and also political figures. And it accelerates the fact-checking process because the AI technology flags statements that aren't questions or opinions for the fact-checkers to review.

• 2:38Scott Galloway?

  And according to Wired, it has cut the time normally spent identifying statements by 70 to 80% or fact-checking. So although AI is helping accelerate the fact-checking process, it's still a long way from being fully automated. And big tech still hasn't fixed AI's misinformation problem. So large language models, including ChatGPT, may be able to produce text that looks like it was written by a person, but they are unable to detect nuance in language and sometimes make things up. So I went on Anderson Cooper, AC360, and Anderson introduced me, gave my kind of a long-winded introduction of who I am, and called me an expert in technology and AI. And then he said,

• 3:15Speaker 02

  I didn't write that, and my staff didn't write that either. No human wrote it. That was written by a new online tool called ChatGPT. It's a program.

• 3:24Scott Galloway?

  And I said, you're right, it's two things. It's remarkable, because I would have believed that they did it. And two, it was wrong. By any stretch of the imagination, I am not an expert in AI. And for ChatGPT to call me an expert in AI means, quite frankly, it doesn't know what it's talking about. In January, researchers at NewsGuard, a fact-checking technology company, tested ChatGPT's accuracy by giving it 100 prompts relating to common false narratives around US politics and healthcare. And ChatGPT produced false narratives in 80% of its narratives. So actually, you're looking at this as a glass half-full. And that is that AI will be used to fact-check. So far, the majority of things I have seen is that ChatGPT will likely, at least in

• 4:06Scott Galloway?

  the short run, be weaponized to spread misinformation. And that is, you can say to ChatGPT or a large language model, give me 15 statements written in the style of the CDC that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA. And a large language model will be able to spit out 15 snackable, tweetable, Instagrammable statements that feel real, that are false. And the problem is incentives. And that is, the incentives are to grab attention and find things that get circulated. And unfortunately, our species is much more drawn

• 4:48Scott Galloway?

  To the novel and catastrophe. You'll have AI-driven fact-checking, but I wonder if the misinformation of the people with incentive to spread disinformation will get out ahead because the platforms will sort of ignore it and look the other way. Because saying that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA, that post spreads faster and results in more engagement and more clicks and more Nissan ads. A really interesting question and more to come here. Thank you, Paul, from Chicago. Next question.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Hi, Praveen. Thanks for creating this space. I actually bond over your podcast with my husband and dad. My question is around the topic you've mentioned a couple of times in recent weeks, which is around the shrinking population or why we are not having enough babies. As an educated young professional that's married and in her fertile years, I want to ask if you've thought about the systemic problem that we have around maternity and working mothers, even dual working parents to not make it extremely gendered. I personally don't feel supported by my environment to accomplish the dreams I have and to be a mother. I constantly think about this and want to get your thoughts.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Isn't there a solution in our governments to provide subsidies to companies for this? Why haven't we found a solution to this decades-long problem? Why is childcare considered invisible labor? I appreciate your thoughts in finding these solutions. Thank you.

• 6:15Scott Galloway?

  A really thoughtful question, and we don't have your name, but I love hearing this when I hear about people bonding over our content. I just can't tell you how exceptionally rewarding it is, so thank you. I remember in the third grade, I was at, you know, they had these assemblies or fire drills. We'd all march out and listen to your principal, who was always a male. And I say to my teacher, I am really not feeling well. And she's like, OK, go to the nurse's office. I start walking and somehow perfectly timed in the middle of the entire Emelita Elementary school, I dropped to my knees and start vomiting like, I mean, the world's largest fire hose. And they called my mom. My mom was a secretary at an insurance company in the valley. And they said, you need to come get your son. And my mom said,

• 7:00Scott Galloway?

  I can't leave. You know, I just started this job four or five months ago. And I think they had a policy where if you missed a day in the first six months, you were fired. Things have gotten better in terms of work's approach to maternity. It's still not where it should be, but it's gotten better. The corporate world has recognized that if we want to bring in the most talented workforce in history, which quite frankly, specifically is American women, we have to offer them something. It used to be two weeks maternity leave. That was a thing, two weeks maternity leave. By the, by the way, the term paternity leave wasn't a term you ever heard. So things have gotten better in terms of the corporate world's approach and to maternity and recognition that we need to have kids. What has not gotten

• 7:44Scott Galloway?

  better, you and your husband can be very successful and still not have the same economic power you should have based on your relative success. It's harder to buy a house. It's much more expensive to raise a child. It's $330,000 now to raise a kid. So God forbid, you want to have three kids. You need a million bucks and that's post-tax. It discourages me or I find it upsetting and I see a lot of it that people, talented people such as yourself, I'm going to assume that you're emotionally secure and you're in a partnership, don't want to have kids. Because I do think it's very rewarding and I do think America needs more thoughtful young men and women who are raised in secure, loving households. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the pandemic was especially hard for women.

• 8:26Scott Galloway?

  In 2020, the female labor force participation rate fell by 1.2 percentage points to 56.2. That's the lowest rate since 1987. So we've lost three decades of female participation in the workforce. Women who leave the workforce are 26% more likely to have children and 67% more likely to be the primary caregiver. A study by Pew reveals that a quarter of working moms say they have turned down a promotion because they were balancing work and parenting. However, however, women are now returning to the workforce faster than men due to a combination of rising costs and more flexible work arrangements. So that's the good news. According to the Washington Post, women's labor force participation rates are up by 3.4 percentage points, while men are only

• 9:06Scott Galloway?

  up by 2.1 percentage points. And the women between ages 25 and 54 with college degrees and children are leading the way. That suggested employers' willingness to offer remote alternatives is helping attract many women back into the workforce. So it's sad that you don't feel you're supported. What I would tell you is the corporate world has gotten better for women with children. I think you're starting out ahead of the game in what sounds like a loving and secure relationship. Having kids is an intensely personal decision. I don't think you have to have kids to be happy, but you are exactly where you should be. And that is facing real stress and trade offs around having kids or not having kids.

• 9:45Scott Galloway?

  But I will say this, if you decide to have kids, don't believe the media that it's a terrible world to bring the kids into. That is bullshit. Every piece of data shows the following. Your kids are probably going to live to 100 should you decide to have them. By the time your kids are your age, there will be cancer vaccines. Your kids will more likely live under a democracy than an autocracy. Your kids will have more economic opportunity. Your kids are going to get to choose who they love. Your kids are going to get to choose more than ever before the life they want to live. The world over the short and the medium term can be pretty fucked up, but over the long term, the trend's better. The good money, the data-driven money all says one thing. If you decide to have kids, they're going to have wonderful lives.

• 10:30Scott Galloway?

  We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

• 10:37Scott Galloway?

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• 11:05Scott Galloway?

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• 11:37Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Question number three.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Hey, Prof G. Michael here from Tempe, Arizona. I've been a huge fan since your appearance on the Morning Group podcast back in 2019, around the time that WeWork was imploding. Been a weekly consumer of all your content across Pivot, Prof G, and No Mercy, No Malice, because it was refreshing to hear an entrepreneur not tell me to follow my passion, but my skills. Previously, I've always attributed being successful with being some famous business tycoon or a boy genius startup kid. When I wasn't able to launch my startup, get that promotion, or land a great job during an interview process, I wasn't really upset because I wasn't happy, but I was upset that I wasn't important. Reframing my mindset with your advice has helped me realize that relationships are much more important than my own fame.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Now, I say all of this not to get your sympathy or dick ride you in a way to get this question aired, but rather just ask you a simple question. Are you happier now that you're more famous?

• 12:31Scott Galloway?

  Fuck, that's a deep question.

• 12:35Scott Galloway?

  Fame is weird. Everybody has a certain level of addiction. I believe. My addiction is to the affirmation of others. And that is, I care too much about people who don't know me, who I don't know, who don't really care about me, who are not concerned with the condition of my soul, aren't going to take care of me when I'm older. I'm too concerned with what they think about me. And for me, affirmation on Twitter, or on the street, or from people I don't know, what you would loosely refer to as fame, is too rewarding for me. It's too important. And what I have recognized and has made me happier

• 13:19Scott Galloway?

  Is I have slowly but surely become much more receptive and appreciative and find more reward in the people who really love me, think of me. My son, we watched The Last of Us last night and my son immediately comes home, dumps off his backpack, rolls in, sits down and throws his legs over mine. And it's just natural for him, right? And there's a level of trust and security there. And I'm finally at the age where that's the most rewarding thing in my life. And it wasn't. It used to be I was more concerned with how I was perceived in the eyes of strangers. So fame is a weird thing. And

• 14:01Scott Galloway?

  that is, it can become very addictive. But what I will say is, I have just the right amount of fame. I can still be anonymous. I can still go out to dinner and with someone and, you know, feel pretty anonymous. The one thing I don't like is you get attacked online. People get virtue points or they get reward from calling you out or pointing out that you're wrong to the point where you have this guardians of gotcha culture. And I think for a while I took that too seriously. I've gotten more thick skin around that. At the end of the day, to be famous is to be loved. And what I would argue is that our culture places way too much emphasis and fake rewards on fame. And as it relates to you, what you want to be is successful. You want to have a plan. You want to get

• 14:44Scott Galloway?

  to economic security because if you can provide economic security for people, if the people that know you know that you're a good provider, that you're smart, that you win at this game called capitalism, you'll get all of the rewards of fame from people who care about you the most. And it will enhance those relationships. I have a lot of friends that have a lot of fame and haven't been able to convert it into economic security. And I think quite frankly, that's very, very frustrating for them. And it all comes down to this. My observation around an algorithm for happiness and a really decent algorithm is to be rich, but anonymous. That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected].

• 15:36Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Caroline Shageran. Our associate producer is Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burrows is our technical director. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod on the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday with No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly markets show.

• 15:57Speaker 06

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