 The 2024 US election is a year away, but legal battles around it are on in full swing. What is the latest from Donald Trump's challenges in the courtrooms? The tech world has been consumed by the crisis at open AI, which is behind chat GPT. What lessons do we learn from this corporate battle? This is the Daily Debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before you go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. Former US President Donald Trump is dealing with a raft of cases around the elections of 2020, whose results he is accused of trying to subvert, and these cases might have an impact on the next election as well. A couple of days ago, a Colorado court held that while Trump had conducted insurrection reactivity during January 21, that 2021, that's the attack on the US Capitol, it was not clear if this was enough to strike him off the ballot. An appeals court meanwhile is hearing Trump on a targeted gag order that prevents him from speaking out against those involved in the election subversion case. For all these legal details, we go to Anish. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. Looks like tracking the legal trials and battles of Donald Trump is a full-fledged beat, so much happening across so many states in the United States, that too. But let's start with some of the latest ones. We know one, for instance, there is something about him challenging a bar on him speaking about some of these issues. There was also a Colorado court judgment recently. So could you maybe take us through what they were? Well, the gag order pretty much was in reaction to his statements against the presiding judge, the clerk of the judge, and also the attorney that was prosecuting him. So basically, it's a very limited kind of gag order, which prevents him from speaking personally or in terms of their profession as well, during the span of trial itself. And maybe he can make statements after that. But basically, it currently just limits some of his statements during the trial, so that there is no kind of campaign being built around the trials, which is just what he does very often. You have to remember that pretty much every case that he talks about, he has pretty much created a campaign around these cases at this moment. He has attacked not only the people who are suing him, but also the judges, anybody who is seen to be in any degree being affecting his chances to the presidency, or for that matter, finding him guilty. And even though the case in question did not come with verdict, as of now, he has already made statements. And there was a temporary lifting of that gag order, and we saw that immediately he made statements against the judge within just days, almost a day or two maybe, that within that he made a very objectionable statement, pretty much calling them to be arrested or jailed or kept under prison for going against him basically. And so this pretty much has been his modus operandi. The fact that a bench of three judges are now looking at this case clearly shows that they are trying to make it as a problem of free speech, but the judges have also expressed reservations about this being a matter of free speech and this being just a matter of a defendant, somebody who has been inducted for a felony to be making statements that can compromise the judicial process itself, but also might also include and attract some kind of attacks on the people who might be either trying him or trying the case itself. So these factors are pretty much at the heart of the case, but it clearly shows that this has been his very common tactic across the board. He has made all of these cases, his campaign issue, made it seem as if he is being very wrongfully victimized or persecuted by the Democrats or the judicial process or anybody who has seen to be in opposition to him. And that has pretty much become his campaign at this point. Even if he is not attacking the challenges within the Republican Party against his candidacy, he's attacking the people who are suing him or the judges who are presiding this case. So pretty much this has become part of his campaign right now and that in itself has its own set of repercussions on the long run. Anish, in this context, of course, another case going on in Colorado as well, which sought to bar him from contesting the next round of presidency. Could you maybe tell us, take us to that as well? Well, this is the verdict as in basically the judge rejected the plea itself. But it's a very curious conclusion by the judge because the judge does seem to indicate that he might have his hand in inspiring an insurrection, which is the only thing that prevents anybody from running for the presidency. But the judge's contention was that the state court and state processes does not have the power to prevent someone from running for office or for that matter whether or not the amendment in question, the 14th amendment deals with the presidency itself. Even though that was the very intention of the amendment at the time because it was a post-Civil War creation. It was made so that Confederates who had surrendered do not get the chance to run for high offices and then influence the government process in the four Civil War United States. So that was the intention and very similar is the case. And this is not the first time. This is the third such court that has rejected a plea on this very basis earlier in Michigan and Minnesota. We had seen the courts, the judges actually refusing to hear the case, rejecting the plea based on very similar pretext conclusions being that the courts do not either do not have the power to prevent him from contesting or it does not have the power to interfere in primaries. That is what the Michigan court order had ruled. Pretty much opening up the chances for the people who had filed the lawsuit to maybe challenge him after the primaries during the presidential campaign. Nevertheless, there is also, we must remember, there is a federal attempt to indict Trump for these very same charges because that might be the only thing that can actually prevent him. Any kind of criminal conviction will not prevent that from happening or prevent his nomination even. And this is pretty much a situation where obviously state courts are dealing with such cases, lawsuits by different kind of people. And there are people who are actually bringing out the fact that his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election is something that should not be, that should actually include punishment, which is fair. But the thing is that it is going to be very, very difficult for courts to prove. Nevertheless, there is a federal attempt as well happening. So we need to wait and see how that is going to happen. But as I said, he's using these cases as well as sort of judicial victory over his opponents. He has framed the Colorado judgment as a massive victory. And mentioned that frequently in his speech in Iowa, where he's now frequently campaigning. It is one of those early voting states that pretty much begins the whole primaries process for both Democrats and Republicans. So this is a massive, very sort of Blitzkrieg kind of campaign that is happening. And he's pretty much using all of these cases. And which the verdicts as well, the rulings of whether or not, which might actually not deal with whether or not he inspired this insurrection, but definitely is coming out of institutional challenges. But he's trying to reframe that as a moral or judicial victory over his opponents. So he's pretty much trying to make everything, every kind of criminal case or even federal cases against him as an attack against him and using that to play the victim card in many ways and trying to rally his supporters for his campaign. Anish, thank you so much for that analysis. We'll come back to you definitely along one year ahead. Lots of verdicts, definitely also lots of electoral contests. We'll come back to you regularly. Over the past few days, tech news has been dominated by one company that's OpenAI, which is behind chat GPT and many other products. The company's CEO and face of chat GPT, Sam Altman, was fired a few days ago by the board and chairman and president Gregg Brockman quit in protest. The pendulum swung dramatically in the face of a looming revolt by employees and they were attempts to get Altman and Brockman back. But when the dust settled, Altman and key colleagues were headed to Microsoft. OpenAI had a new CEO and most of its employees were calling for the resignation of the board. But this is not merely an issue of boardroom intrigue. OpenAI's decisions and directions may have serious implications and in fact is a matter of concern for all of us. We go to tech analyst Bapa Sinha for more. Bapa, thank you so much for joining us. So OpenAI in the news and this time not for product related reasons or AI related reasons but for boardroom drama and intrigue. It's been quite a few days in the first Sam Altman is fired. Then, you know, there are discussions that he's going to come back. Then they have a new CEO and then Sam Altman and some of his key colleagues are joining Microsoft of all companies. So, but of course behind all this is also a lot of debate about some of the larger issues regarding AI which we'll get to. But first of all, your quick thoughts on what this means for does this mean anything at all for OpenAI and what does it mean that some of these key people associated with this technology are moving to Microsoft. Right. So, I think drama best describes what has been going on because it's been difficult to keep track of all the happenings at OpenAI. I mean, it's fairly shocking that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, the president and the CEO of OpenAI were just fired apparently on a Google Meets call, right? So not even in person. As you know, Sam Altman kind of has become a celebrity by promoting chat GPT and he is the most recognizable phase for the general public of representing OpenAI and chat GPT. So for him to suddenly get fired was a shocker to everybody. And then the circumstances in which it happened, him leaving and then they trying to call him back and it appeared that he was coming back and then now he's not coming back and like there are now rumors or stories about not just Sam Altman and some of the senior leadership but bulk of the OpenAI engineers moving to Microsoft. So it's quite a modern drama. Now to look, when you kind of read the analysis behind it, there have been attempts to make it out to be a battle between the people who are more for ethical AI, right? Like people trying to caution about the use of ethical, caution about the use of AI and that kind of has been led by the chief scientist of OpenAI. His name is Ilya Satskeva, right? And Sam Altman who is like the more traditional Silicon Valley CEO who wants to monetize it and get like the fastest, quickest way to monetize it and get big valuation. So while it has been presented as a battle between these two opposing camps or opposing ideas of how OpenAI should evolve, frankly, I find it difficult to kind of assign ethical values to any of this bunch, right? I mean Ilya Satskeva's at least stated version is that he fears that OpenAI, that the chat GPT, the OpenAI products in general are close to what is called AGI, Artificial General Intelligence and for those who don't know, there is the AI community makes this distinction between regular machine learning and artificial general intelligence. Regular machine learning is AI having to being able to do certain tasks which we are used to, right? We are used to Google AI able to recognize images about correcting text, prompting for text. We are used to those things, right? And chat GPT kind of advances that frontier. But artificial general intelligence is supposed to be far more than these points at like particular tasks. Artificial general intelligence is having human like intelligence, right? Where you are, you don't get good at one or two tasks, but you think like humans and are able to adapt to pretty much any tasks that's given to you. Now to claim that they are on the verge of their ethics guy claiming that they are on the verge of artificial general intelligence seems to me fairly unethical, right? Because frankly we are nowhere close to artificial general intelligence. And there are people who argue that the current model of AI the current direction in which AI has gone there is no path to artificial general intelligence along these lines. So to claim that this AI will become like the science fiction like matrix where AI becomes evil and takes over human kind that's really far fetched. To me it just like seems like a clash of personalities on who is going to control open AI because it's become fairly valuable, right? I mean there are a lot of facts about its valuation in like probably closer to 100 billion dollars. So clearly there is a lot of money involved. Of course the larger question behind a lot of this is what use is or how is AI used in society at this point? And I guess there are many dimensions to it. Like you said one is the fact that it is currently being used in various kinds of tasks. There is a question of regulation for instance which very little has actually been done about it although there has been a lot of talk about it as well. But does this current battle in any sense touch upon some of those larger issues in terms of how AI itself needs to be sort of say harnessed for the benefit of a larger community as opposed to making the billions you are talking about? Right and I think this the camp the Ilya camp kind of projecting that that's what that's where they're getting to, right? And these are all billionaires and or at least multi-millionaires and they have formed this thing called a philanthropic group, right? They call it a practical philanthropic or something like that, right? I mean the exact term they use and they claim that they want AI which will be more they want they're not really calling for government regulation, right? What they are calling is for the community to self-regulate and make sure that you don't go and develop like what they are claiming, rogue AI, right? But I don't think the problem really is about a human like AI going rogue. I don't think that is the threat we face. The threat we face is much more banal which is the AI is used in lot of cases for providing or restricting access to government services, right? And for example AI, we know AI has been used for determining jail sentences for convicted criminals for access to welfare schemes, right? By claiming that they can they can beat out fraud or by determining insurance claims, right? Now there, AI is even in much more banal way, right? It has been trained so that access to insurance claims, access to welfare schemes are basically denied to people hiding behind that, oh, it is not human bias but it is a neutral machine which is kind of reaching these conclusions. And really the solution to that is in many cases to reject the idea that you can come up with these metrics and kind of have AI intelligently decide on who gets access and who doesn't get access because these machines are trained to kind of lean towards denying access, right? And so then it really comes to the political dimension, right? Do you really want to brittle down the state and do you want to get into an austerity mode or not? Or do you want to give people universal access and all that? That's really a debate about politics, like what kind of society you want and then from there follows what technology will do for you, right? Rather than it being the other way round where you are claiming that you have this super intelligent neutral like politic neutral AI which kind of intelligently figures out things, right? And I think none of these none of the people who are in the AI industry, right? And especially this AI industry which is the Silicon Valley, BC-led companies, none of them are really talking about that. I mean, they're actually talking about the opposite of that. Right, Bappa. And I think a key question at this point because this is something we regularly look on this show is for countries of the global south, you know, where do like, for instance, we know that CHATGPT is now popular in India and many countries in the global south but, you know, the way that is really for most of us the understanding of what AI is at this point in the sense or some of the applications you talked about connected to Google and stuff. But really for countries in the global south where is the entry point when it comes to the question of AI itself? In terms of where do you sort of away from these kind of boardroom drama and battles involving billions, but where decisions are being made which might affect many of us because some of the products that, you know, are made might just be adopted almost uncritically by governments, by state governments, by various institutions here. So for countries in the global south, is there really an entry point at this point of time? I mean, right now most of the AI research the AI research in these kinds of fields like the CHATGPT like AI that is really so expensive, right? That like forget about the south, right? Even countries in the developed world even government institutions in the developed world can't afford that, right? I mean, in the case of open AI they got 10 billion dollar funding from Microsoft and most of that was to purchase the hardware the compute platform on with their AI is going to run on, right? And so this category of AI really requires a huge amount of funding which is not available to most government institutions or universities, right? Only available to the VC funded very heavily funded startups and or companies like Google and Facebook which are I mean with the setting on a boatload of cash, right? So now I mean that being said, AI can do useful things or AI could be made to do useful things it could help you in industrial automation it could help you in manufacturing it could give you a advantage in many industrial domains, right? And that would require investment in AI which would help you not for the entertainment industry or for the advertisement industry but to be focused on society's needs, right? Now, but that's a huge that's not where Silicon Valley wants to invest, right? And so that requires governments in the global south to come together to pool their canty resources in comparison to what Silicon Valley has and try to like with any technology try to see if that technology can be made to serve the interests of the people at large and not a few millionaires and billionaires. That would probably be a true understanding of what ethical is in this context as opposed to how that word is being used in this recent debate. Thank you so much Bapa for explaining some of the nuances of this debate to us. Thanks.