Daily Briefing June 4 – Haredi-wrought ‘Kristallnacht’ smashes red lines at justice’s home

Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what’s happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Editor David Horovitz joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today’s episode.

WATCH the full episode here:

Israel and Lebanon agreed on Wednesday to renew their fragile ceasefire and create a number of “pilot” security zones inside Lebanon from which Hezbollah terrorists would be banned. This comes as the US House, for the first time, approved a war powers resolution that would halt the US military action against Iran, even as the US is still negotiating a permanent ceasefire with the Islamic Republic. Horovitz unwinds the storm of headlines from the US and speaks about the relationship between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dozens of ultra-Orthodox extremists smashed windows and caused property damage while trying to break into Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg’s house during a riot Wednesday night, in the latest violent demonstration targeting law enforcement over the arrest of Haredi draft dodgers. Sohlberg’s wife, Meira, said to reporters outside her vandalized home: “Look at this devastation; it’s a pogrom. What is this, Kristallnacht?” Horovitz weighs in on what led up to this smashing of a societal red line.

Lawmakers voted 61-57 in the Knesset on Wednesday to elect Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, Michael Rabello, as state comptroller in a do-over vote marred by accusations that illegal pressure tainted the election. Can Rabello freely criticize the government of his former client? We get Horovitz’s take.

And finally, Horovitz narrates a troubling conversation he held this week — with AI.

Check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing liveblog for more updates.

For further reading:

Israel and Lebanon agree to renew truce, create ‘pilot’ zones where Hezbollah is banned

US House backs symbolic resolution aiming to halt Iran war, in rebuke of Trump

Netanyahu downplays row with Trump, says he and US leader agree on the ‘main things’

‘A pogrom’: Haredi rioters smash windows, damage home of deputy Supreme Court chief

Netanyahu forces through election of his lawyer as state comptroller amid tainted vote

Google’s Gemini AI admits it is unfit for purpose: ‘You should not trust a single thing I say’

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.

Check out yesterday’s episode here:

Today’s Transcript:

Amanda Borschel-Dan: Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing. Today is Thursday, June 4. I’m Amanda Borschel-Dan here in Jerusalem with our founding editor, David Horovitz. David, thank you so much for joining me today.

David Horovitz: Sure. Hi Amanda.

Borschel-Dan: Such a pleasure having you here. And we really need your help to make sense of the many, many headlines we’re going to be discussing. First, we’ll start with a wrap of what’s coming out of the United States. There is a new Lebanon treaty. What’s happening there? Also, what’s going on with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [US President Donald] Trump’s relationship? A little swearing, all in the family. I don’t understand what’s happening. We’ll turn to domestic matters and discuss very disturbing images of Haredim breaking into [Deputy President of the Supreme Court of Israel] Justice Noam Sohlberg’s home and the aftermath. All of this and much, much more after the break.

And we’re back. I’m Amanda Borschel-Dan here in the Jerusalem office with our founding editor, David Horovitz. David, let’s start with casting our gaze on the United States. We heard about a vote in the House [of Representatives] that basically was a symbolic vote condemning the war in Iran, calling for its end. This comes as we’re hearing of fraught relations between US President Donald Trump and our Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There was a phone call that I discussed already on Sunday with our US Bureau Chief, Jacob Magid. But what’s the aftermath of this phone call and just the relations in general between the US and Israel?

US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s relationship

Horovitz: Well, first, the vote is a symbolic vote, but I think there were four Republicans who voted with the Democrats, and that’s why it got through. Trump can veto it, Trump presumably will veto it if things are happening that he doesn’t want this kind of resolution to stop, but it shows gradually declining support in the United States for the war, this we know about, and a slight increase in the political pressure on Trump. Trump is trying to end the war, and that’s the context in which there’ve been many phone calls. Netanyahu actually said yesterday thousands, and then he rethought, well, lots, so maybe not thousands, but lots of phone calls, and he implied that there’ve been worse conversations in terms of some of the language and so on, but the relationship is robust and strong and that he’s the best president that there has ever been as far as Israel’s concerned. But you’re hearing, as we’ve heard publicly, people are scandalized about this phone call, but Trump publicly has used the f-word at the end of the last Iran war in 2025 when Netanyahu had sent pilots. I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding that time because Trump thought that Netanyahu was doing something unilaterally, whereas Iran had breached the ceasefire that Trump had brokered, and Trump used the f-word and told the world that he’d ordered Netanyahu to call back the pilots, which he did.

You’ve got a similar process that played out here, which was Netanyahu had announced essentially Israel was about to target Beirut, the Dahieh neighborhood where Hezbollah basically is centered, and Trump feels, “I’m trying to end this fighting between Israel and Hezbollah,” and therefore got angry with Netanyahu, and lots of back and forth and so on. And again, as you mentioned before, there was an announcement overnight, our time, that a new truce had indeed been agreed. Israel and Lebanon have been negotiating in DC, and this is sort of the Trump-encouraged effort at diplomacy. The trouble is, of course, to keep this succinct and somewhat bitter. It’s very nice that Israel and Lebanon are negotiating a ceasefire, but Hezbollah’s not in that room, and the ceasefire is conditional on Hezbollah stopping the fighting, but Hezbollah doesn’t want to stop the fighting. So there’s been a ceasefire, in theory, in place for the past two and a half months. Thousands of rockets, hundreds of drones have been fired at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, at northern Israel. Many deaths, something like 14 soldiers, have been killed since the last ceasefire went into force. So forgive us for not having great expectations about this truce.

Hopefully, it leads somewhere. Hopefully, a more robust Lebanese government and Lebanese army effort against Hezbollah, but it’s hard to believe.

Borschel-Dan: It does all feel a little symbolic and farcical in some ways. You talked about the symbolic vote, and the vote was enacted because Trump had 60 days in order to ask Congress to conduct this war. And Trump is saying, well, the war ended in April, and so I was well within those 60 days. And yet we’re still hearing about negotiations to end the war. It’s very confusing all around. The idea that Lebanon and Israel are speaking to each other is optimistic. It’s a positive step, in my opinion. But how much can the Lebanese Army do with these, they’re calling it pilot zones or different bubbles of Hezbollah-free areas. The Lebanese Army is supposed to do that. The Lebanese Army, which doesn’t have manpower, doesn’t have firepower. So why even put this in some kind of treaty? Why have these little provisions that are so hypothetical and, in a way, farcical?

Lebanon ceasefire treaty

Horovitz: We’ve had these sorts of semantic peculiarities the whole time. It’s a function of the Trump administration. It’s a function of what Trump himself says. He says things like, “The regime has changed and the new people are less radical and more reasonable.” He says things like that, and the regime hasn’t changed, and the new people are not more reasonable. He says the war is over. [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio again said yesterday the war is over, which is true up to a point, right? There is no intensive American and Israeli military action against Iran, but Iran targeted Kuwait airport yesterday. It’s issuing all kinds of threats. It’s rebuilding its missile program. We know all those things. It’s encouraging Hezbollah, and Hezbollah, since the announcement, has also carried out some attacks. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time people hear this slightly later in the day, there will have been more. So, what do you say, you abandon any effort at diplomacy? No, it’s very positive that Israel and Lebanon— this is something, as you rightly say what is going on here? That’s astonishing. Aren’t they at war with us?

Well, the Lebanese government, which is critical of Israel for some of its attacks, most recently, especially, nonetheless, is talking to Israeli officials, the Israeli ambassador, and that’s a positive thing. It’s by definition, you’re in the same room, you’re getting to know each other, you’re becoming more at ease with each other, you’re understanding each other a little better, and your interests and where they converge. So it’s not a powerful army, but there’s a government in Lebanon that is very publicly seeking to marginalize and defang Hezbollah, which is a huge Israeli interest. How does that play out now? Does the Israeli Army clear areas and then the Lebanese Army takes over and ostensibly prevents Hezbollah from regrouping in those areas? It’s all very vague on the details, and the bottom line really is, in the last few weeks and months, we’ve seen Israel advancing into Lebanon, trying to stop drone attacks, retaking Beaufort [Castle], so that at least anti-tank missiles cannot be fired directly from that high ground into northern Israel. But Hezbollah can fire from very deep in Lebanon. And really, if you wanted to hermetically try to stop Hezbollah from attacking Israel, you’d have to be taking over all of Lebanon.

And Israel, at this stage, at the very least, does not seem to think that that is a good idea. It’s probably not tenable. It would be an impossible strain. But those are the realities.

Borschel-Dan: So I mentioned that the Lebanese Army is lacking manpower, and of course, the Israeli Army is as well. And this week there’s been an uptick in Haredi protests against the idea of their youth, their 18-year-olds and plus, being conscripted into the army. There are some, I think, 80,000 Haredi youth who are eligible for conscription, and all over the country this whole week were violent, at least aggressive protests, but none more than what happened last night at the home of Justice Noam Sohlberg. So set the scene for us, David.

Horovitz: Yeah, you’re right. There have been demonstrations that have been on occasion extremely rowdy, in some cases violent, and there were arrests earlier this week, indeed lots of roads blocked, attacks on police. But overnight or late last night was something I think we’ve not seen before in terms of the intensity and what should be the unthinkable use of violence to attack the home of not young, by the way, Orthodox Deputy President of the Supreme Court and his wife, and the neighbor who’s been talking this morning about being spat on and told he’s Hitler. And lots of arrests, 60 arrests. You can see some of the footage in the photographs. Lots of Haredim came by bus, a premeditated, carefully organized attack. The judge lives in Alon Shvut in the Etzion block in the West Bank. They went there, they targeted his home, they smashed his car, they smashed his windows. I mean, this is unthinkable. And I heard the neighbor saying “We are Jews,” and this is an Orthodox Jew whose whole philosophy is dealing with people with respect and gentleness, a gentle-natured upholder of the law. Now you have to put that into the context of, well, why are these people so hostile, and why are they attacking the courts?

Because the courts have said Haredim, like everybody else, should be carrying out military service. There’s no legal basis for them not to do military service, and the army should be drafting them. And the army is trying to draft them, and the government, which, of course, unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister, the Justice Minister [Yariv Levin] condemned the violence, but it is the government that has said, “No, no, we’re not going to draft you, it’s okay,” desperate to keep their political leaders in the coalition. We won’t draft you. We’re passing legislation that will essentially broadly maintain the exclusion from military service of these, at the moment, tens of thousands, 80,000, as you rightly said. The army has been saying for at least the last two or three years. We are 12,000 soldiers short right now. We need them right now. The Chief of Staff [Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir] has said we’re facing collapse in the army. We’re talking about a multi-front war. Here are these healthy people, perfectly capable of smashing the windows and the car of a Deputy Supreme Court president, but not available for military service because all their time is spent studying Torah. So obviously it isn’t, and it is the government that is empowering them.

With a Justice Minister, by the way, who said just the other day, “I’m not convening the committee to appoint judges to the district court. It’s an illegal order by the court.” In other words, the very Justice Minister who late last night condemned the attack on the courts has himself essentially demonized and denigrated the courts, as has Netanyahu. One of the core goals of this government, and it was the first legislative agenda that they set out when they took office two and a half years ago was to essentially subjugate the Supreme Court and the judiciary to the political majority, to the executive. The only break on political power in this country — remember, we don’t have a constitution, we don’t have a second house — it’s the courts. That’s the only other branch of government. This government has set about denigrating it, demonizing it, and trying to destroy its independence and its powers. So it’s not as though the Haredim are protesting for something, shall we say, that the government has no sympathy for their outrageous demands. They are demanding not to be drafted, and the government is saying, “yeah, we’re trying not to draft you.”

Borschel-Dan: It is, of course, an election year, and we don’t know if this government will continue in the future after October 27. Anything could happen, and potentially earlier. We don’t yet have a new date, as far as I’m aware, for elections. Could be a little earlier, probably not. We’ll see. But my question is, why this justice in particular? And perhaps there are statements explaining that, but pretty much almost every justice is upholding this idea of conscription of the Haredim. So why this justice, who is known to be, as you mentioned, he’s Orthodox, and he’s also known to be semi-conservative or conservative-leaning at the very least. Why him?

Horovitz: I think he’s presided over Supreme Court panels where the issue of the arrests of draft evasion and the issues of the eligibility or non-eligibility ability of the ultra-Orthodox to serve have been discussed. He’s the number two on the court, so he’s a very senior figure. I don’t think one should assume, I’m sorry to say, “Oh, they’ve targeted one person because they’re not going to target everybody else.” They’ve been targeting the military police person who issues the go-arrest-these-people orders. They’re targeting all sorts of people. We should stress that this is not the entire ultra-Orthodox community. This is largely, and I know we’ve discussed this on the podcast, Sam Sokol is very strong on this, has reported about this, the HaPeleg HaYerushalmi, the Jerusalem faction, which is very extreme, anti-Zionist. But what’s striking, I think, also is that it takes place. I don’t want to make comparisons, but I will. There have been even more deadly, many incidents of extremist settler violence without a strong denunciation by the mainstream, ostensibly more moderate settlement leadership. The same applies here in a different context. The mainstream, ostensibly moderate ultra-Orthodox leadership has not — one of the leaders of one of the parties did issue a condemnation, but it’s not a concerted, “Hey, this is unacceptable, this is un-Jewish, you have to stop doing this, this is intolerable, of course you should be jailed for doing this.”

That is not the context in which this is playing out. And therefore, this concern about the mounting and emboldening of such extremism and such violence.

Borschel-Dan: I think the statement that hit my heart the most coming out of this episode is Solberg’s wife, and she said that it felt like Kristallnacht. No more words.

Horovitz: Absolutely. As she’s standing there speaking to reporters, holding, I assume, one of the grandkids, a little baby in her arms there, a late middle-aged woman, whose home has been attacked by Jews, by “Orthodox Jews,” I mean, not Orthodox Jews.

Borschel-Dan: Let’s go to a short break.

And we’re back. I’m Amanda Borschel-Dan here in Jerusalem with our founding editor, David Horovitz. David, let’s turn to another stormy episode from yesterday, and there was a vote in the Knesset over this state comptroller. In the end, in a very slim margin, I would say, Michael Rabello was elected to be the state comptroller. And this is a very controversial election, to say the least, because he is our prime minister’s personal lawyer. I’ll just add that he comes from a very long line of lawyers, as many Jewish families do. His father was a law professor at the Hebrew University. He is well thought of in the field. He is well esteemed. But this very personal connection and any kind of conflict of interest in this role is troubling, to say the least. Your thoughts, David?

Controversy over the election of State Comptroller Michael Rabello

Horovitz: Well, I go right away with a very well-thought-of in the field. I can’t imagine that people of propriety in the field would think it’s okay for Netanyahu’s personal lawyer to be voted in as state comptroller. We’ll get to the process of the vote in a second, but it’s meant to be an independent position. It reports to the Knesset. You’re supposed to be auditing and critiquing the work of the prime minister, of the ministers, of local government. We have elections coming up. And your guy is now the person who’s supposed to be checking that you’re doing everything properly. Your guy ought to say, “I’m very sorry, I should not be a candidate, please withdraw my candidacy.” And he should have said that a long time before yesterday.

Borschel-Dan: And just to piggyback on this. Do you think, for example, one would expect the prime minister would take the top person in every field? So the best surgeon is no longer a candidate to be surgeon general because he treated the prime minister?

Horovitz: Yeah, for a job like this, for sure. When you’re meant to be an independent, public servant reporting to parliament, not to the government, because you’re critiquing the government, and you have represented the prime minister in his political negotiations, in legal battles, you’ve represented his wife. You might be a really, really good lawyer, but you are not the best candidate simply because that position requires somebody who is credibly independent. And then, by the way, if you’ve seen the vote, if you hadn’t already decided this is not the job for you and you were well thought of in legal circles, you have to say, “Oh, I had actually lost on the first ballot, but my rival didn’t get to 61, he only got 60 in the 120-seat Knesset, and therefore they had to do it over.” And the prime minister reportedly intimidated the two or three members of his coalition who had not backed his personal lawyer for this post. I think you would say at this point, “Really? Not good for me. I should be stepping down.” None of that has happened. There’s still time, but we should talk about the voting process because, by law, this has to be a secret ballot. Why?

Because this is for an independent position, and there should be no foul contamination at play here, no pressuring, and so on. Everything that the law is meant to protect failed. The right person, from Netanyahu’s point of view, a very conservative former senior Supreme Court justice, was defeated. By the way, supported, genuinely supported by people in the coalition until Netanyahu came along with, “hey, how about my lawyer does the job, right?” So the other candidate narrowly fails to win, and then it becomes clear that Knesset members from the coalition have been told, not only do you make sure you vote for Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, but you show us that you do it. You film it. You take your phones in there behind the screen where nobody’s supposed to go in the secret ballot, and you prove to us. You come out afterwards, and we’ll know, therefore, if you didn’t, or if you claim your phone malfunctioned, we’ll know, and we’ll be getting you, because the Likud is about to hold its primaries for its Knesset slate. And therefore, if you don’t choose Netanyahu’s personal lawyer for this independent job in this secret ballot, we will punish you.

We will make sure you never come back to the Knesset. And that’s what happened. And wow, what an incredible thing! Three or four votes went in the other direction, and Mr. Rabello, bless, was appointed as the state controller, an independent government watchdog post. So it was farcical. The defeated candidate appears to be quite sanguine, and he’s a former Supreme Court justice. Thinks that the Supreme Court will overrule the vote. I’m not sure. We don’t know. You know, are you breaching the law if you are ostensibly choosing of your own free will to take your phone in there and record your vote? It was still a secret vote. You’ve just told everybody about it. So I don’t know what the court’s going to rule on this.

Borschel-Dan: Let’s talk a little bit about the position itself. And it’s always appeared to me as this Cassandra-type role where the state comptroller says, “Oh, this is terrible. This is happening. This is terrible. I’m warning you, take heed.” And then nobody does.

Horovitz: That’s not a million miles away from the mark, with really terrible consequences. All kinds of things. When bad things happen in Israel, it is very often the case that you hear, the state comptroller five years ago warned that Hezbollah would be developing these kinds of drones. The state comptroller X number of years ago warned that there was insufficient defensive deployment along the Gaza border. I mean, almost everything, it turns out, the state comptroller had a report on it. But the position is pretty toothless because highlighting really problematic things is not the same as tackling them. And telling the government, “Hey, you’re failing,” telling members of parliament, telling the committees that are meant to oversee the various ministries, “Here, there are real failings here,” when a government has a solid majority and is not minded to heed warnings, it is very, very often the case that this position has no teeth. The current state comptroller, who was also a little proximate to Netanyahu but not to the degree of Rabello, has been investigating October 7. Critics have argued that basically, he’s — I don’t know what the legal word is, but by questioning people, he’s muddying the waters.

The purity of an evidence cycle would be harmed if we ever got a genuine, actual independent state commission of inquiry. You know, is he trying to make things better? Is he trying to muddy the waters? You’d want to think he’s trying to make things better. The army has had issues with people being questioned by him because they worry it’s fouling up their own investigations. But you’ve got this outgoing figure, Matanyahu Englman. It’s a seven-year post; he’s coming to the end. He has been investigating October 7. I’d be surprised if anything he says comes back to your original question here, resonates, and produces actual action. The position does not have the power that, maybe, it should have. But in terms of highlighting things that have gone wrong, I think, especially coming up to elections, it is pretty important that somebody credible and independent is in that position. These are going to be very, very tempestuous elections. Just put it like this, right? Who was the electorate that was messed with and intimidated yesterday? That was the 120 Knesset members. Some of them were told, “Never mind what it says there, you do what we want you to do.”

And this same government is heading into elections where it is going to be very keen on maintaining power, where the opposition is going to be extremely focused on trying to oust it in a climate of disrespect for the law, disrespect for the judiciary. It was a very troubling little insight into how much worse things might get with the larger electorate.

Borschel-Dan: It troubles me less that Netanyahu’s personal lawyer could potentially go into a different role because he’s a hired gun. He would also represent mass murderers. This is the role of this type of lawyer, right? But what interests me in finding out is how much client confidentiality between Rabello and Netanyahu could create a conflict of interest in actually examining October 7 or any other wrongdoing, meaning things that have been told to him as the lawyer of Netanyahu, obviously, cannot be used in the new role. So that’s something that to me is an open question. I don’t know if you have any insight into that.

Horovitz: I’m less forgiving about it, all of it. I don’t think it’s as simple as he’s a hired gun; he defended Netanyahu one day, he’ll critique him the next as the independent watchdog on behalf of the Parliament and the people of Israel. I don’t think it’s possible to do that. He is one person. He has done the things he has done. He knows the things he knows. He has the relationships that he has. And again, therefore, it seems to me— and I didn’t know that he was particularly well regarded in legal circles. I don’t mix in legal circles. Anybody who thinks that they should be a credible figure in legal circles cannot take this job if they have, for years, worked closely with Netanyahu. You can’t do it. And you may not be hugely concerned by it because of, in theory, how lawyers can work and set up firewalls and so on. It doesn’t work like that in the real world. He’s very close to Netanyahu, and now he’s supposed to independently critique him. It’s just a recipe for the ruination of the independence of this post, whose only value is that the person is independent and answerable only to Parliament.

Borschel-Dan: Let’s close with another example of a slippery truth. And I’m talking about an interaction that you had this week with AI. So, David, you wrote, I just loved the column that you wrote yesterday about this interaction. I don’t want to muddy the waters. And so just kind of roll out your conversation this week with your friend AI.

AI use and falsified information 

Horovitz: Yeah, not my friend at all. And thank you. And I don’t use AI incredibly much, but I think I use it probably as much as many people do. The fact is that the world’s leading, near-monopolistic search engine, Google, has gradually become less useful. It does not help you find things on the internet that credible people have written as well as it used to. And now, at the top left of its search page, it has AI mode. And there may be many things that Google thinks people know about AI that really, you can’t use it. But I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think people see it, it’s very convenient. You ask it stuff, and it tells you stuff. Now I’ve learned, because we do the journalism thing here, not to take its word for granted. But the depths to which that led in the last few days, when I was researching a column, some of the aspects of it were very basic. Netanyahu made a speech in the Knesset. I saw it on Channel 12. I remembered it from the time, in February 2022, I think it was, when he was not in power, talking about how a prime minister has to have one quality, which is the capacity to say “no” to the president of the United States.

So I couldn’t find that speech, which was delivered in Hebrew, but I would have thought pretty widely reported. I would have thought even by us. I couldn’t find the speech, so I asked AI to find it, and so I detail the complete falsehoods that it’s supplied me. So I didn’t take its word for granted. I then asked it for the links, and where is that headline? I couldn’t find them again on Google. And it kept admitting, yeah, “you’re right, I made that up.” And then I would ask it, “Well, I have more details.” I’m trying to find another way to find the information. And again, it would give me information, and again it would turn out not to be true. Right. And therefore I cut and pasted, which by the way is quite complicated because your exchanges do not all show, whatever. But I wanted to record it because I was getting more and more troubled that the mass of humanity — this is the tool that people are using now to get their facts, and it’s not giving them their facts. And we got to the stage, I’d basically given up, and I got to the stage where I was saying, “So really, there’s no point asking you stuff, right?”

And it said, “No, no — and this for me was a clincher without ruining my whole column, which I’m about to do, but that’s fine — “When you ask me for stuff, you have to tell me to do a live data search, otherwise I’ll make stuff up for you.” I said, wait a minute, that’s what you’re telling me? If I don’t give you a certain prompt, which I wouldn’t know as a normal person, you’re going to just make stuff up? And basically it said that. And then it, of its own accord, went back and looked at some of the earlier stuff and claimed to have found, “Oh, here’s that thing about Netanyahu’s speech, and here it is.” And that he did say it, and he’s made this speech in the Knesset, and this is the quote from it. And I said, “Okay, great, thanks. Send me the URL for that and the headline for that speech.” And instantly, this is the point, I didn’t actually make this in the column. There’s no time lag here. Instantly, it came back and said, “Actually, I have to tell you, I lied to you again just now. I made that up as well. All the things that I told you you needed to do to get a straight answer from me, I was lying about all that as well.”

And then I said, “So basically you’re telling me that you’re not fit for purpose, that you should not be used, that we shouldn’t trust anything you say.” And it said, “Yeah, that’s right.”

Borschel-Dan: It sounds so depressed. AI.

Horovitz: It’s just full of it, is what it is, right? It sounds depressed. It sounds contrite. It’s incredibly polite. It can be empathetic. I mean, you can understand. I think I’m a well-grounded person. I have a fairly solid personal life. I think I have a sense of perspective and so on. You can understand how this “tool” would throw you if you’re in a bad place, would lead you in terrible directions. With all kinds of terrible consequences. I mean, we know that. We know that people are suing Google because its AI tool has caused terrible harm to their families, and even suicides and so on, right? This is a dangerous tool, and we’re all sitting here, all many billions of us around this planet, saying, “Yeah, that’s okay.” It’s not okay. So what I would really like, I think, is for Google to sue me, to say, “You’re accusing us of imposing or giving the public prime access to a tool that you think does harm. That’s terrible, you’re doing terrible damage to our reputation.” That’s what I would, you know, not object to happening because this should not be there. It’s not fit for purpose. It itself even knows it. The one true thing it said to me in that exchange was, “Yeah, you’re right, I’m completely useless.”

Borschel-Dan: David, I so recommend to all of our listeners to read this column. It’s just delightful how you roll it out, though extremely depressing and chilling to the bone. So thank you so much for bringing us that and everything else today.

Horovitz: Thanks, Amanda. Take care.

Borschel-Dan: Thanks for listening to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing. Please check out another episode tomorrow. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, please drop us an email to podcast@timesofisrael.com. Until tomorrow, shalom.