you've noticed an article in the Bee or The Onion, they're a little formulaic, but it works anyway. You know, a lot of humor is very formulaic. So maybe AI can do better for humor than I thought. But I wouldn't say it's up to the level of the best human humor, but it surprised me how close it got.

All right. I have a hypothesis. This is not a prediction. It's not a prediction. It's a hypothesis, meaning we'll test it without trying and we'll know whether it's true or not. It goes like this: The AI music will not replace human-made music for at least hit records. It will definitely replace human musicians for advertising and, you know, maybe the background music of a video game, you know, maybe some music in your elevator, stuff like that. So AI will definitely replace the low end of the music business.

But for the high end, where you're listening to it for pure enjoyment, here's my hypothesis. You ready? Now first of all, I do agree that AI could match or surpass the skill level of the best human musicians. So this will be the part that doesn't make sense for a second. So I do accept that AI will be better at knowing what people want to hear and then producing it better than the best human eventually. However, here's what my hypothesis speculates: You won't want to listen to it.

So here's the weird part. The AI music will absolutely be better on every level that you can determine that things are good. It'll be better than the human music. And you won't want to listen to it. Here's why: If you know it's made by AI, it won't trigger your reproductive instincts. Because my hypothesis is that music is showing off. That's what it is. And the best music of all is showing off the most. In other words, it's showing a genetic talent that you would want to mate with.

It's not an accident that people want to mate with Mick Jagger, right? Because when you watch Mick Jagger, even at his current age, you watch him do his thing on stage and you are completely certain that you couldn't do that. And you're pretty certain that nobody you've ever met could do that, what Mick Jagger does on stage. And so you say to yourself, he's got an extra gear. There's something genetically blessed about this person. And so you automatically want to mate with them. Guys want to compete with them, want to be them. And that music is really, really about activating your reproductive system, but you never are conscious of it.

All right. So here's the part you would have to accept to think that the hypothesis has any value: That you were never conscious of the fact that music is all about your reproductive instinct. That's it. Same with art.

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine if the works of Rembrandt had never been created. So let's say there had never been an actual Rembrandt human being. Nobody ever made Rembrandt's paintings. But then AI comes along and you say, hey AI, make me some great paintings. And somehow the AI produces the exact work of Rembrandt. But in this thought experiment, the real Rembrandt never existed. Just his work is reproduced by AI. Would it be valuable? The real Rembrandt's work is worth many millions of dollars. If the exact thing had been produced by AI but had never been produced by any human before, would it be worth millions? No. Its exact value would be zero. It would actually be zero.

That was my hypothesis. Sounded about when I started. You were completely rejecting it, weren't you? Like the first few sentences you're like, no, no, nope, nope, nope. AI music is going to be better than humans. It will be technically better. Technically it will be. But if you know that it's made by a computer, you will get bored with it quickly because its qualities are not anything that will stimulate you, because you can't reproduce with a computer.

What do you think? Your comments changed as I went, because I feel like some of you got a little bit persuaded. But like I said, it's not a prediction. Don't confuse it with a prediction. It's a hypothesis. In other words, we'll be able to test it pretty quickly. I would argue that I already tested it. When I asked you about the Rembrandt, that was the test. If you had said, my God yes, those Rembrandts are so amazing. If an AI produced them, I would like them just as much and pay just as much for them. No you wouldn't. Your value you put on the art is entirely tied up with the fact that a human made it. Take that away and it doesn't have any value at all.

So I think I've proven it just by that example, because you would all come to the same conclusion. I think you wouldn't pay for an AI Rembrandt. I know that.

Now I'm going to take it a little bit further into the real world. When I became a cartoonist, there was an insight that I had that I executed during my career. And the insight was that the audience can't separate the cartoonist from the cartoons. That was my insight. And that they needed to know who I was in order to fully enjoy the cartoon.

So when Dilbert was about the workplace, the reason it became famous is not because the jokes were good and the people liked the workplace. Do you know why Dilbert became famous? Because I was in the workplace. So the story wasn't, oh my God this is a good comic. You know, I like to think sometimes people laughed at it. But the story was that I was doing something dangerous by working for a big company while mocking a big company. And wasn't I going to get fired at any minute?

And do you know what that did? It triggered people's reproductive instincts. Because I was doing something you couldn't or wouldn't do. You couldn't or wouldn't make a comic that would get you in trouble. You'd be afraid. So I was taking a risk but I wasn't afraid. Indeed, I ended up being nearly fired and eventually fired. So it wasn't an imaginary risk. And people could sense it was a real risk. And people could sense that I was taking on the biggest powers in the world, because if I got banned from one company, I probably would have trouble getting a job at another one. It looked like a really dangerous thing to be doing. And I think that triggers people's reproductive instincts, male and female. Not that the men wanted to mate with me, but they were identifying with it like, oh that's brave.

When I got canceled, why did I get canceled? It's because the audience does not separate the artists from the art. That's a real clear example of that. So as soon as the artist said something they didn't like, they didn't like the art anymore. In fact, I heard this exact opinion. I heard somebody talk about somebody they knew who said they used to like my comic but when they found out about my political opinions they couldn't read my comic anymore.

See, that same phenomenon is going to come to art of all types. If you know who the artist is, or at least that it's a human, it makes you see the art different. As soon as you take the human out of it, the art has no real value except a pretty picture. Its economic value will be near zero.

All right. Didn't see that comment, did you? All right, here's another one maybe you didn't see coming.

I told you that in Finland briefly the price of electricity dropped below zero. Theoretically not actually below zero, but in theory it was free for a while. And that's because there was more supply than demand. And that was largely because they'd opened up a nuclear site recently and they had a lot of electricity. But apparently that effect is all of Europe right now. So at the moment, the price of electricity in much of Europe, or most of it actually, is zero. And it's because of nuclear energy, primarily nuclear energy.

So there you go. If you wondered, is there any way to get to this future where we got electric cars and no climate change? Yes, yes there is. It's a very clear path now.

All right. As you know, I have not been reporting on or talking about too much this debt ceiling issue where the Congress has to decide on a budget or else the country defaults on its debts and we all die. Now the reason is because I always thought it was fake. The dynamic of these negotiations is both sides are looking at the polls. And if the polls say you would benefit by holding up the process, then you do.

But I heard that the polls have reversed. And now the Republicans look like they would come out ahead if the government closes and we default on debt. So the Republicans don't have a reason to compromise because the poll is currently showing that they would gain. The Democrats, if they're looking at the same poll information, know that they would lose and they would be blamed for whatever happens if we don't reach a deal. So that pretty much guarantees it will be a deal because we're all operating in self-interest.

But the reason I don't report on it is it is all fake news until the last minute. The only thing that counted at all was the last minute. So if it's a month before the deadline and the news is telling you, oh here's a big story, it's not. That's not a story. There isn't any possibility they would have agreed a month in advance, because a month in advance the polls are not reliable. They have to make sure that just before they execute, at least one side, or actually both sides, know which way things are going to go if they don't make a deal. That's how you get a deal.

So it was never a real story until the last 60 seconds. And maybe that's not even real, because I had a feeling if you miss it by two days, the stock market takes a dump for two days and then comes right back. That's what I think. So I believe that this is an example of the news making something out of nothing. Not that there's no risk. There is. But if you were to rank that risk with all the other risks in the world, it wouldn't be a top 50 in my opinion. So that's sort of a semi-fake news to keep an eye on.

All right. What would you do if, let's say, we missed the deadline and stocks go down 19% — I'm just picking a number — stocks go down 19% because we missed a deadline