Actress Cate Blanchett said she worries that artificial intelligence (AI) could “totally replace” anyone and said it’s a much bigger problem than just how it will affect her career. Speaking to the BBC, the 55-year-old actress admitted she’s “deeply concerned” about the technology and worried more “about the impact it’s going have on the average person” than her industry. “I’m looking at these robots and driverless cars … and I don’t really know what that’s bringing anybody,” Blanchett said. “I’m worried about us as a species, it’s a much bigger problem.” “You can totally replace … any person,” she added. “Forget whether they’re an actor or not, if you’ve recorded yourself … for three or four seconds your voice can be replicated.” Cate Blanchett interview for BBC News “I’m deeply concerned about AI”.pic.twitter.com/CztBQ3Ydpp — cate blanchett photos (@blanchettphotos) November 30, 2024 “When you look at it one way [it’s creativity], but it’s also incredibly destructive, which of course is the other side of it,” Blanchett continued. Hollywood has been recently reckoning with AI. In August, Tom Hanks slammed ads using the technology and warned fans to not be fooled, Fox News noted. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE “There are multiple ads over the internet falsely using my name, likeness, and voice promoting miracle cures and wonder drugs,” Hanks said. “These ads have been created without my consent, fraudulently and through AI.” “I have nothing to do with these posts or the productions and treatments, or the spokespeople touting these cures. I have type 2 diabetes, and I ONLY work with my board certified doctor regarding my treatment,” he added. “DO NOT BE FOOLED. DO NOT BE SWINDLED. DO NOT LOSE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY.” Earlier this year, Scarlett Johansson made headlines when she said she was forced to hire legal counsel, accusing OpenAI of using a voice for ChatGPT that sounded “eerily similar” to her own after turning down an offer from the tech company, as previously reported. In a statement, Johansson said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked her to provide a voice for his popular AI system because he felt it would be “comforting,” but she declined. With the previous unveiling of “Sky,” a voice option for ChatGPT, Johansson said friends, family, and the public all noted that it sounded like her. “I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Johansson said. OpenAI denied “Sky” was an imitation of Johansson’s voice, insisting it was instead developed with a different professional actress using her “own natural speaking voice.” Altman also claimed the voice for “Sky” was not Johansson’s and was “never intended” to resemble the actress’ voice. He said OpenAI cast the “Sky” voice actor before any outreach to Johansson. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products,” Altman said in a prior statement. “We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.” Related: Cate Blanchett Claims She Didn’t Make Any Money On ‘Lord Of The Rings’: ‘I Basically Got Free Sandwiches’

The reason Donald Trump is president-elect is not just because he is a unique, out-of-the-box historical figure — although that is true.   The biggest reason Trump is president-elect is because Joe Biden was dead his entire presidency, and everyone knew it. The media lied about it, and the White House lied about it. Now it can finally be said by those people since Biden is exiting office.  This should be the biggest presidential scandal in history. In the scenario with Woodrow and Edith Wilson during Wilson’s second term — when he basically had a stroke and was completely incapacitated while Edith ran the country — there was not a lot of transparency to the public. The media was fairly small. Such a scenario did not require the collusion of thousands of people to cover up what was happening with Woodrow Wilson.  Situations like what happened with Biden have never occurred in the modern media age, but it happened and the cover-up was extraordinary. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show The 25th Amendment should have been applied to Biden. His Cabinet should have said he was no longer capable of holding office and made Kamala Harris president, but they didn’t have the stones to do it.  Instead, they’ve allowed this diminished president, this person whose brain is not functional, to continue in the office of the presidency of the United States, the most important office on planet Earth, simply because they didn’t have the actual guts to oust him. So instead, they hid it. They hid it from the American public.  And we all knew it. We all knew it.  The amount of damage their subterfuge did to the Democratic ticket this year is almost incalculable because no matter how many times Democrats call the Republicans liars or threats to the Republic, no matter how much they say Trump is not normal, it turns out that the least normal thing is keeping a corpse in the White House like Weekend at Bernie’s, wheeling him around for a press conference, pretending he’s sentient while the rest of the public can see everything that’s happening.  It was one of the great Emperor’s New Clothes moments in American history. The Wall Street Journal reported: To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.  That was early in Biden’s tenure. The disastrous pullout from Afghanistan was September 2021. So pretty much from the moment he entered office, he was so diminished that the Cabinet members or members of the legislature were not meeting with him. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE It’s not as though anything important was happening enduring his presidency, such as the pullout from Afghanistan, the Hamas October 7 massacre of Israelis, or inflation at a 40-year high. Biden and the Democratic Party couldn’t be bothered because they were so high on their own supply. They believed the American public hated Trump so much that they could pretend this mummy was president of the United States and functional, even though we could all see he was not. And the media went along with it. I’m not sure if there’s a bigger political scandal or a bigger media scandal. As I’ve said many times, there is a Democrat media human centipede in which the Democratic Party decides what issues matter most and the media then repeat them ad nauseum.  The legacy media are just stenographers for the Democratic Party. According to the Wall Street Journal: Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.  Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race. They treated him like a toddler. They treated him the way I treat my four-year-old. They prescreened all the material they gave him in a world in which everything was hunky dory as though no one could see he was diminished. The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his reelection bid. After the debate with Trump, the reason the media turned on Biden was not because a light bulb had gone off and suddenly they realized he was not mentally capable. What happened is that they were embarrassed. They were embarrassed because it had become clear to everyone just how incapable the president of the United States actually was.  For the media, it’s always been about their profile with the American public. They thought they could get away with it. And then Biden embarrassed them, they didn’t like it, and they turned on him.  We all pointed out Biden’s senility. We knew all of this.  This is the part that makes it scandalous: We all knew it. It was all right there. They are so brazen in the media. They were so brazen in this White House. They thought they could get away with all of it.  They urinated on the leg of the American public, and they told us it was raining.

'one of the most powerful lawmakers'

Prince Harry is reportedly suspicious of how the infamous paparazzi car chase in May 2023 was handled and accused the New York Police Department (NYPD) of a “cover-up.” Harry’s security team sent letters to the higher-ups at the NYPD conveying how the former royal felt about the handling of the situation, according to the Daily […]

'I want to ask you one more time'

The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it will be withdrawing both parts of its Plan C for student loan cancellation. One part involves various ways the department would have declared that a borrower has a “hardship” deserving of complete loan cancellation. The other part would have identified additional categories for waivers of loan repayments, such as when the borrower’s loan balance is larger than the original loan (which is, in fact, a normal situation for many borrowers who get their loan payments deferred for various reasons ). Both are being withdrawn via a scheduled notice in the Federal Register on Dec. 26. Withdrawing the hardship rule was what my Heritage Foundation colleague Madison Marino and I advised in our regulatory comment on the proposed rule. We argued that the department should confess its pretextual rulemaking—conveniently finding “authority” to cancel as much debt as quickly as possible—and that this newly discovered authority violated what is called the Major Questions Doctrine, which presumes that Congress doesn’t delegate to agencies issues of major political or economic significance. We noted several additional problems in the proposed hardship rule, such as a completely unknown cost to the government and, therefore, to the taxpayers. That’s because other student loan schemes of the department, especially the SAVE plan (which changes the parameters of income-based repayment plans), have been enjoined by courts—they can’t be enforced—so it’s very hard to determine how many borrowers would be affected by eligibility for one scheme or the other. Our colleague Paul Ray also provided several distinct reasons that the proposed rule is deficient. One is that “the proposal’s list of factors to assess hardship is woefully inadequate.” Meanwhile, the proposed rule to extend waivers of repayment has already been enjoined by the court of the Eastern District of Missouri. This is one of many instances of “We told you so.” On May 16, my colleagues Jack Fitzhenry, Lindsey Burke, and Madison Marino had given many reasons against the proposed rule in a 12-page regulatory comment. Good riddance to some of the most lawless actions of one of the most lawless agencies in one of the most lawless administrations in U.S. history. The post Education Department Cancels Loan Cancellation Scheme appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Religion of Pieces Believers Busy Being Little Killer Christmas Bees

George Mason Freshman Plotted Attack on Israeli Consulate in New York

As a strategist specializing in information warfare, the progenitor of the 1st Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual), and the creator of the insidious FATEMAH “slow motion war” exercise taught to many students attending the National Intelligence University, I believe U.S. authorities must take the drone incidents over the northeastern seaboard seriously. If U.S. agencies are not behind this chaos in pursuit of a nefarious “McGuffin,” and if it isn’t the work of a wealthy group of tech-savvy anarchists, then we must consider the possibility that a nation-state or its proxies are responsible. Could this not be an ideal moment for China to invade Taiwan and secure it through fait accompli? Two dark possibilities merit serious consideration. First, the northeastern seaboard incidents may represent an “information tsunami” designed to distract while a hostile power launches an offensive elsewhere. Second, the drone activity could signal the prelude to an attack on the U.S. homeland. Whether the drones are part of a clandestine U.S. operation uncovering an infiltrated enemy plot or hostile drones conducting pre-attack reconnaissance, a significant threat looms. In either scenario, the United States faces its weakest strategic posture since Pearl Harbor, led by a cognitively impaired President Joe Biden and a Vice President Kamala Harris whose speeches lack strategic clarity, to put it charitably. Donald Trump will not return to the Oval Office until January 20, leaving the nation — after four years marked by inflation, unpopular diversity initiatives, and surges in illegal immigration — focused upon the temporary fully respite provided by the Christmas and New Year holidays. This moment presents an opportune time for a strategic move by a nuclear-armed adversary such as China, Russia, or North Korea, potentially joined by an unexpected latecomer to the nuclear club, Iran — or perhaps a coordinated effort by all four. The term “information tsunami” refers to a massive surge of televisive content generated by global media, including social media, broadcast television, satellite, cable, and podcasts. This wave overwhelms and displaces most other information for a set period. During such a wave, national focus shifts entirely to its subject — in this case, the mysterious New Jersey drones. This redirection of attention creates the ultimate strategic feint, leaving critical issues unmonitored. And no one seems to be minding the store. Could this not be an ideal moment for China to invade Taiwan and secure it through fait accompli? Or for Russia, desperate to expand its gains, to launch a larger offensive in Ukraine before the United States can respond? Or for North Korea to strike South Korea, exploiting political turmoil in Seoul? Or something even darker: Could this be the prelude to a direct Chinese attack on the U.S. homeland, aimed at preventing American interference in a takeover of Taiwan? Such a prelude could unfold in three ways: Reconnaissance: China might conduct a detailed survey of U.S. military and civilian infrastructure, gathering an electronic order of battle akin to the U.S. Cold War U-2 missions that provided critical insights into Soviet vulnerabilities. Desensitizing deception: The situation could mirror the Nazi Kriegsmarine’s “Channel Dash” during Operation Cerberus in 1942. The Germans gradually increased low-power radar jamming to lull the British into complacency, then switched to high-power jamming to evade detection and escape through the English Channel. Similarly, Americans growing accustomed to White House spokesman John Kirby’s droning assurances that there is “nothing that indicates a public safety risk” might face a devastating national surprise. Target selection: The drones could be identifying way points for smaller drones to carry out precision strikes. These future attacks might target individual windows or open doors in key buildings, operations sheds, and hangars, or focus on specific aircraft, weapons systems, or military personnel. Another, even darker possibility emerges: The drones’ iterative, slightly offset racetrack flight patterns reported by witnesses on the ground in New Jersey and elsewhere resemble the flight paths crop dusters use to disperse chemicals over land to neutralize plants and insects. This same pattern could serve to drop biological warfare agents, with an incubation delay designed to achieve maximum surprise. Chinese researchers, for instance, have gained significant insights into the effectiveness of such biological agents through numerous U.S. studies. Skeptical? Just Google “COVID.” In an independent study, to which I contributed late in the process, retired Air Force Colonels John Warden III and Larry Weaver developed a notional scenario of a future Chinese attack on U.S. soil. Weaver’s video depiction of this hypothetical attack stands out for its acute relevance. Although set in the future, the idea of using bioweapons as the initial phase to induce strategic paralysis in the United States remains a credible and valid concern. So, I offer these scenarios, not to induce fear, but to encourage U.S. leadership to focus on what could be an immediate and lethal strategic threat and to level with the American people.

Republicans in Minnesota are celebrating after a judge disqualified a Democratic politician over residency issues and handed control of the state House of Representatives to the GOP. Democrats and Republicans each had 67 seats in the Minnesota House, but after Democrat Curtis Johnson was ruled disqualified, Republicans now have a slim, one-seat majority. 'This is a clear reminder that laws matter, and integrity in the election process is non-negotiable.' Johnson ran for House District 40B and won by 7,500 votes over Republican candidate Paul Wikstrom, but Wikstrom sued based on a residency requirement that a representative live in their district for at least six months prior to the election. After reviewing surveillance evidence presented by Wikstrom, Judge Leonardo Castro found that Johnson failed to meet the requirement and called it a "deliberate, serious and material violation" of Minnesota election law. The seat will be filled through a special election, and in the meantime, Republicans will have a majority in the state House. Minnesota Republican House Leader Lisa Demuth praised the decision. “With the overwhelming evidence we heard during the trial that the Democrat candidate in Roseville never lived in the district, I applaud the court’s decision to grant the election contest and look forward to ensuring that a valid candidate represents District 40B during the upcoming legislative session,” read a statement from Demuth. “This is a clear reminder that laws matter, and integrity in the election process is non-negotiable.”Democrats have the option to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Minnesota's next legislative session will begin Jan. 14 under Republican control. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!