Lula da Silva has returned as Brazil's president. This will cause a major geopolitical shift. Meanwhile, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro fled to Florida, fearing legal consequences for his corruption.

Brazil-based journalist Brian Mier joins to discuss what a third Lula government means for Latin America and the world.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CQq1kTubYQQ

Follow Brian at https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR

Brazil's President Lula is back - and Bolsonaro fled to Florida

The United States is adding even more money and capacity into its cache of nuclear weapons, the detonation of which would mean tens of millions of people dying. What's behind the estimated $10 trillion in spending on a product that the government will hopefully never use?

Brian is joined by Greg Mello, co-founder and Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

$10 Trillion for Nuclear War: Racing to the Nuclear Cliff

The US claimed unelected coup leader Juan Guaidó was "interim president" of Venezuela from January 2019 to December 2022, when his former allies in the right-wing opposition removed him from the position. Washington however still refuses to recognize elected President Nicolás Maduro.

Geopolitical Economy Report editor-in-chief Ben Norton discusses the end of the meme-worthy character with Venezuelan journalist Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza, who runs the independent news website Orinoco Tribune.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sTjKvZmY7w4

Support Orinoco Tribune at https://orinocotribune.com

End of Juan Guaidó: US-appointed Venezuelan coup leader ousted by ex allies

On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss widening global inequality in light of the Oxfam report showing that two-thirds of all wealth created around the world since 2020 has gone to the richest 1%. They also dissect what makes the rich different from the rest of us.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

How to Become a Billionaire

Historian Aaron Good explains how the CIA organized a coup against Guatemala's democratically elected left-wing President Jacobo Árbenz to stop land reform and help the United Fruit Company (Chiquita today). He also discusses the Dwight Eisenhower administration's policies in Southeast Asia and the Vietnamese national-liberation struggle against French colonialism.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JTfMOH-j4Oc

This is PART 15 of the Empire and the Deep State series we are co-hosting with historian Aaron Good and producer Seamus McGuinness of the American Exception podcast.

PLAYLIST with past episodes in the series here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hNArLl765PXe8tsTKmOciGL

How CIA overthrew Guatemala's elected president for United Fruit Company (with historian Aaron Good)

The United States tries to keep people in the dark about the blockade against Cuba and the many accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution. This is part of the U.S. campaign to overturn the socialist government in Cuba that has successfully led its people through more than 60 years of attacks, attempted coups, sanctions, trade embargoes, and the Covid pandemic.

Brian is joined by Gloria La Riva, the coordinator of the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee and a longtime leader of brigades to Cuba to learn and expose people in the United States to the realities on the ground, and Aminah Sheikh, who is a labor and community organizer active in the Canadian peace movement.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

The People of the World Stand With Cuba Against the U.S. Blockade

The U.S. mainstream media is acting as a propaganda machine for the U.S. drive to keep the Ukraine war going — while Ukrainians and Russians fight and die — and weaken Russia.

Brian is joined by Walter Smolarek, editor of Liberation News and producer of this show, to help explain and dissect what’s going on in Ukraine, with the Nordstream pipeline, and with related coverage of China.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Rania Khalek’s interview with Seymour Hersh on his Nordstream pipeline story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDRGHGXn0U

All the Lies That Are Fit to Print: The Media & the Ukraine War

On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, among others, that has caused widespread panic. The federal government has bailed out these banks, which will make hard-felt U.S. inflation even worse. Are we headed for another economic crisis?

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.

Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

Collapsing Banks & A Weakening U.S. Empire

We are joined by Abeba Birhane — Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation — for a critical discussion about the release of GPT-4 and OpenAI. We also get into the excellent work that Abeba and colleagues have done mapping the specific values encoded into, and the surveillance pipeline that influences, the vast majority of AI/ML research. 

••• Abeba’s twitter: https://twitter.com/Abebab
••• Abeba’s paper – The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3531146.3533083 

Stuff we referenced
••• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI will reshape society, acknowledges risks: 'A little bit scared of this' https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/openai-ceo-sam-altman-ai-reshape-society-acknowledges/story?id=97897122 
••• GPT-4 Technical Report https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf
••• Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
••• The Sparks of AGI? Or the End of Science? https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-sparks-of-agi-or-the-end-of-science
••• GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/gpt-4-and-professional-benchmarks

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

243. GPT-4 and the Politics of OpaqueAI (ft. Abeba Birhane)

We get into Evgeny Morozov’s latest essay on the geopolitical interests and military neoliberalism that’s really driving the AI arms race. Morozov traces today’s developments back to the Cold War – not just as a metaphor, but by showing how many of the same people and institutions are still in positions of power. To understand the America vs China framing of technological competition, which is now so dominant and two-dimensional in the discourse about AI, we must see how it is stoked by people like Eric Schmidt and Gilman Louie and their  networks of influence, capital, and ideology.

Article we discuss:
••• AI: the key battleground for Cold War 2.0? | Evgeny Morozov https://mondediplo.com/2023/05/02china 

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

253. The Cold War Origins and Future of Today’s AI

Charles and Alex catch up on OK Go's cereal lawsuit, Rivers Cuomo's visit to the Rock Hall of Fame, and guys who still talk about Bored Apes every day. Fortune Kit on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fortunekit

165 - Perfect Score

News and views about the world for those who want to change it, with Brian Becker

How to Become a Billionaire

The Socialist Program with Brian Becker

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