“The Uncanny Valley”: The Iran War in the Age of AI, the Ethics of the Prediction Market, and Outperforming Netflix

Zoe Schiffer: Emil Michael, you should turn off your views on LinkedIn because people can see when they look at your phone.

Brian Barrett: Yeah, that’s a tip for Emil Michael if you’re listening. And then, if you’re listening to Uncanny Valleywhich you should.

Leah Weiger: And this is actually the Trump official leading the war against Anthropics here. He has these deep ties to the tech world and is the Pentagon’s public enemy number one for anyone who tries to bypass the Pentagon. So the fact that he probably doesn’t have the best operations in the world? But secondly, it’s a relief to make this fight public, is something to keep in mind because it’s not just a message to the Anthropist in my mind. It is a message to anyone else who dares to question these policies.

Brian Barrett: I want to go to something higher than reason. Have you checked all your everything or Polymarket Conservative lately? How are we?

Leah Weiger: Well, I’m not yet invested in our business Survivor Winners, but soon, soon.

Brian Barrett: No, in terms of things that are surprising and shouldn’t be anymore, it’s clear that prediction markets have taken over a lot of our lives in many ways by – I generally mean “our”, not the three of us.

Leah Weiger: The three of us text every morning and say, “What did you do in Calci last night?”

Brian Barrett: Yes. But surprisingly, and not surprisingly, there are plenty of bets being made about the Iran war to continue this thread. Right now, one of the most important bets on Polymarket is “Will the Iranian regime fall by June 30?” Total bets are about $7 million in this market alone.

Leah Weiger: This is very annoying, Brian.

Brian Barrett: Yes.

Leah Weiger: This is people’s lives. I don’t know. I realize that a lot of this has become a manipulative version of myself. I understand that the stock market and the way we do a lot of all of this, but this seems more fun to me.

Brian Barrett: Well, in terms of people’s lives, I mean there was a big debate earlier this week about how to do this everything Bet settlement or market solution. There was a market worth $54 million in The fate of the Iranian Supreme Leader. I think they framed it – Leah, correct me if I’m wrong – they framed it as he would be out of power.

Leah Weiger: And that’s exactly what happened.

Brian Barrett: Then it was blown up with a missile.

Leah Weiger: So they technically ran out of power, but that wasn’t the bet.

Brian Barrett: Because you can’t bet, and they say, “We don’t let you bet on deaths here.” So he is out of power, but not. So they’re always betting on whether people will die, they just find nice ways around it and then they have a hard time solving these markets, so that’s a problem. The fact that there was a $54 million bounty for killing this guy brought together a crowd of better people, including one user named MAGAMyMan, who won $553,000 at the time of all this. It’s outrageous. I think whether any of this is considered insider trading or not is curious.