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Oil Companies Post Historic Profits For 2022; House Votes To Remove Rep. Omar From Foreign Affairs Committee; ChatGPT Becomes Fastest-Growing Consumer App Ever; Alleged Nazi-Themed Homeschool Network Investigated. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired February 02, 2023 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:26]

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: While you were struggling to pay to fill up your gas tank last year, the world's largest oil companies were making more money than they ever have before. ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell all just posted record obliterating annual profits. If you think they're going to use the money to make your trip to the pump less painful, think again.

CNN's Matt Egan is at the magic wall to help us understand this. Matt, how much money are we talking about here? And what exactly are they planning to do with it since it doesn't seem to be give the rest of us a break?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Kasie, a big oil is minting money right now. Check out these eye-popping numbers. Shell, Exxon, Chevron, all of them have doubled their profits over the past year. All of them to record highs. Exxon alone, $59 billion. If you add all this up, you get a mountain of money, $135.5 billion to be exact. That is enough money to basically buy the NFL.

Forbes pegs the valuation of the 32 NFL franchises at $137 billion. It could basically just use last year's profits to buy that to take this a step further. That's enough money where they could buy Ralph Lauren, Peloton, Delta, BestBuy, Etsy, Chipotle, combined.

So what are these companies doing with all of this money? Well, they are spending on expensive drilling projects, but not aggressively enough, according to their critics, which includes the White House. They are spending aggressively on rewarding shareholders.

Look at these buybacks that have been announced, $4 billion from Shell, $50 billion from Exxon, and Chevron alone, $75 billion in buybacks. Kasie.

HUNT: Must be nice. OK. So, Matt, how did we get here exactly? Can you walk us through that?

EGAN: Yes. Well, there's a number of factors here. The war in Ukraine, of course, sent prices for oil and natural gas sharply higher. Demand has bounced back from COVID.

And this is a key one. Big Oil is under a lot of pressure from Wall Street. Investors don't want companies to spend on expensive drilling projects that may or may not pan out. They want them to reward shareholders with buybacks and big bullet Big Oil is certainly listening.

One other important factor here, this is a notoriously boom to bust industry. When times are bad, they're really bad. Look at this, Exxon lost $22.4 billion in 2020. Some companies went out of business. But, Kasie, clearly, these latest numbers show that boom times are back in Big Oil.

HUNT: They certainly are. And just briefly, gas prices have been creeping back up. How bad are they getting? Why are they going up under these circumstances?

[13:35:06]

EGAN: Yes. So look at this gas prices. Here we are with gas prices are ticking back up, 350 a gallon. This is unusual at this time of year. Normally, demand is very weak. Demand is not the issue here, it's supply. Winter weather knocked out some refineries, that has caused gas prices to creep back up, 28 cents in the last month, 40 cents from the low in December.

The question is, how much higher do gas prices go? GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan, he told me that we could see the return of $4 gas as soon as March.

HUNT: Oh, boy. I guess now is a better time to be buying stock in oil companies than it is to be driving a pick-up truck that takes a lot of gas.

Matt Egan, thanks very much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Coming up next, it's the fastest growing app ever. And experts say, it could take your job. Ooh. We're going to go inside the jaw dropping rise of the artificial intelligence's chatbot, ChatGPT. That's coming up.

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[13:40:31]

HUNT: The House just voted to remove Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee over past comments she made that were criticized as anti-Semitic. The vote went down along party lines, seen as a victory for Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He was able to keep his moderates in line on this.

CNN's Manu Raju is at the Capitol. Manu, walk through what went down today.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this went down along straight party lines. Kevin McCarthy getting his members in line. Some of them concerned about taking this action, but nevertheless getting the votes 218 to 211. Straight party lines one Republican, David Joyce of Ohio, voted present. But this came after a very acrimonious back and forth and after last Congress from Democrats removing two Republicans from all of their committees because of their past inflammatory rhetoric. McCarthy vowed to take -- kick off Ilhan Omar for the past year and a half or so from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

But I asked him today whether or not this was just tit for tat. Republicans now going after Democrats retro -- political retribution of sorts. And he claimed this situation is different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): We're not removing her from other committees. We just do not believe when it comes to foreign affairs, especially the responsibility of that position around the world with the comments that you make. She shouldn't serve there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So this is not how Ilhan Omar sees this talking to reporters. After the vote, she said this vote was about revenge. She said they made this vote that was about vengeance, that was about revenge. And that was about making sure a particular voice in perspective was not on a committee that they disagreed with. But nevertheless, the vote succeeded now Ilhan Omar not part of that committee going forward.

HUNT: OK. Quite a precedent to set. Manu Raju, thank you very much for that reporting as always.

And what is the fastest growing consumer app in history? If you said TikTok, you would be wrong. It's something called ChatGPT. Analysts say the artificial intelligence app had a massive 100 million unique visitors in January. And this wasn't just its second month of operation.

Tom Foreman joins us now to help us understand this. Tom, I will admit, I had to get -- give myself a crash course in what this app was and what it does. So if you could kind of walk our viewers through. For those who haven't heard of it yet, what it is and why they're probably going to hear about it soon if they haven't already.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you haven't heard of it, and you haven't signed up, I would say first do that, because you need to have some idea of how this thing works. It's changing the world a lot. What it is, is an artificial intelligence chatbot that has been jammed with all sorts of information. And with that information, it can produce some amazing responses. It's not searching the internet. It's doing it from its database.

It can write essays, basic business letters, notes to your mom, it can do all that in a very human like way. It can solve basic math problems. It can write simple computer code, I say simple because not the most elaborate and it can give human like unique results.

It seems like a human is writing this in a matter of seconds. So for an example, one of our producers said let's ask it, how talented is CNN's Tom Foreman? This is the answer it wrote in just seconds. Tom Foreman is a highly talented journalist and correspondent for CNN. His extensive experience and reporting has covered many major news events. He has a reputation for delivering clear, concise, informative reporting, widely --

HUNT: True.

FOREMAN: -- respected for his ability. His skills and dedication to his craft have earned him recognition and accolades in the journalism community. Pretty much nailed it. A little understated.

HUNT: I love it.

FOREMAN: It could go a little farther. Yes, yes. But people do love this because it does a remarkable job of pulling information together like that.

Look at that. You talked about the growth, 100 million active users in January after this thing launched. And it's still in an early phase. Compare that to TikTok took nine months to reach that level when at launched. Instagram, two and a half years.

So, yes, this is a sensation. We -- when we've reported on this so far, before it reached this level. I have said, get on board, start learning about this, because this will change your life, not just this, but where AI is going. It's important for people to start grasping what this means and how it will affect the way they live.

HUNT: Yes, it is pretty intense. I mean, look, I love the bio it wrote of you. I'm skeptical. It could -- it could trick your mother into thinking it was you but, you know, you're going to have to run that test yourself.

[13:45:06]

FOREMAN: True.

HUNT: And I have to say, Tom, I mean it does seem like there are some serious concerns here that could very quickly and easily manifest in the real-world in ways that we don't anticipate.

FOREMAN: Of course, absolutely. For example, already, the company behind this has put out a fix in a sense of sort of rudimentary things. You detect it so that students don't use it for writing essays or college entry, essays, that sort of thing, which is also happening. They're trying to figure out how they can stop that.

There's a threat to jobs. I mean, look, if you're a company out there that currently has somebody who does some kind of writing for you at a low level, your plumbing company, and somebody has to write your business letters, if you have an AI app that will write them for you, that person may have lost a job. Cybersecurity concerns and interestingly, a lack of morals. Do think about this.

The question is, it is still an AI bot. It doesn't know in a grand sense what it is saying. So it could embrace racist ideas, it could embrace -- they build safeguards in against that. The question is, how long does that last? And does that extend to other companies who then emulate this and move forward?

Artificial Intelligence is a really interesting thing. The question is, can we harness it in a way that frees us from the work we don't want to do and yet not turn it loose to do other work that we wish weren't done?

HUNT: Yes, it's really interesting because we, especially here in this country, have had a history of embracing these advanced technologies as we have invented them without necessarily thinking through them ahead of time, often with unforeseen consequences.

Sexism is another one that I hear from actually --

FOREMAN: Yes. This is a -- this is a huge -- this is a huge thing.

HUNT: In politics, they talk about that a lot.

So, Tom Foreman, thank you very much. We really appreciate your time.

So just how smart is ChatGPT? It recently passed practice questions from all three parts of the U.S. medical licensing exam. Second year med students spent hundreds of hours studying for part one of the test. Part three is usually taken by med school graduates. We should note that the AI barely passed, but you know what they call a med school grad who barely passes the exam. They are still a doctor.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard joins us. Jacqueline, this is very impressive. I mean, we've heard stories about computers beating people at chess. This is something totally different. And beyond that, I mean, how impressive is this?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Yes, Kasie. You know, it still is impressive, because these are complicated questions that are part of the practice questions for the exam. And the chatbot got the questions right more than half of the time.

Researchers found that it had a greater than 50 percent accuracy and they also said that it exceeded 60 percent in most analyses. And 60 percent is the threshold that they use to gauge whether it passed or not. And what I mean by complicated questions.

Here's an example. There's one question about a 52-year-old woman who developed an unusual cough. And it's important to note, she was taking lisinopril, that's a medication for high blood pressure. And the ChatGPT accurately answered this question. You want to know which one it was here? It was D. That was the correct answer. And the ChatGPT, not only correctly answered it, but it gave reasoning behind it, saying that the lisinopril was part of the reason why she developed this cough. It was an unusual side effect.

So that's an example of how the ChatGPT, not only answered the questions accurately, Kasie, but it also gave reasoning behind it as well. HUNT: I mean, I could barely wrap my head around everything you just walked us through. So I'm going to take that as an example of these chatbots sophistication. Jacqueline Howard --

HOWARD: It's impressive.

HUNT: -- thank you very much for your reporting.

All right. Coming up next, a reportedly Nazi themed homeschooling network is upsetting an Ohio town and educators might not be able to do anything to stop it.

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[13:50:46]

HUNT: In Ohio, officials are investigating a homeschool network with a controversial curriculum, it allegedly includes praise for Adolf Hitler, racist remarks about Martin Luther King Jr., and anti-Semitic ideology. But there's probably not much that education officials can do about it.

CNN's Omar Jimenez joins us now. Omar, walk us through what we know about this homeschooling network.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kasie. So a state education official for starters told me they're reviewing compliance with regulatory and statutory requirements, but it's not clear how much they can actually do about the curriculum because they don't review or approve curriculums for homeschooling.

Now, this is a group that's believed to operate out of Upper Sandusky, Ohio. It's filled with pro-Nazi, white supremacist, homophobic, you name it, is probably in there. And they mask these messages in learning plans.

So for example, over Thanksgiving, this group posted a lesson plan for copywriting, so learning handwriting, basically through Hitler quotes, so as you see them on your screen there.

And last month as MLK Day approach, Mrs. Saxon, which is just a username, wrote, "It's up to us to ensure our children know him, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for the deceitful, dishonest, riot-inciting negro he actually was. He's the face of a movement which ethnically cleansed white side of urban areas and precipitated the anti-white regime that we are now fighting to free ourselves from.

[13:55:10]

And in bold and underlined under that, this person wrote that this is a message and lesson for elementary age kids.

Now, the superintendent of the Upper Sandusky school district put out a statement that reads in part, just saying that this is an egregious group, but also that parents are the ones that are responsible for choosing the curriculum and course of study. The parents' chosen curriculum is not sponsored or endorsed by the district.

So it's unclear what they can do about it, but obviously, a matter of concern, Kasie.

HUNT: Concern indeed. Very much so.

Omar Jimenez, thanks very much for that report. We really appreciate it.

That's going to do it for me this hour. Thank you so much for joining us, but don't go anywhere. We're going to have so much more news right after this.

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