Klaus and Me

The Story of a Rebel and his ChatGPT

In 1989, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore released a movie called Roger & Me. (I’m using the term “documentary filmmaker” quite loosely.) Anyways, the film is about Moore’s quest to interview GM Chairman Roger Smith to ask about the economic and social decline of Flint, Michigan after GM shut down its factories there - eliminating 35,000 jobs. The tagline for the movie was “The Story of a Rebel and his Mike.”

While Michael Moore is a leftwing propaganda artist - and an ultra wealthy one at that - he does a great job of highlighting the human misery globalization has caused many American communities. The same workers who helped build GM to become the world’s largest car maker were cast aside for efficiency and profits. Moore never actually gets that interview with Smith, but he’s able to communicate a powerful narrative along the way and bring awareness to the impacts of worshiping efficiency at the expense of the people who made you.

Site of former Buick City plant in Flint, Michigan. Source: Hotcars.com

But what if Michael Moore had gotten the interview? What would he have asked and how would Roger Smith have explained the closing of factories? We can be sure that Smith’s initial responses would be corporate PR gobbledygook. The question is whether Moore could have persisted and gotten to the deeper issues.

If a movie like Roger & Me were made today, the white whale wouldn’t be Roger Smith. It would be today’s titans who influence the movement of trillions of dollars in wealth and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. It would be people like Larry Fink (Blackrock), Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase), and Klaus Schwab (World Economic Forum).

Introducing Klaus GPT

We weren’t able to get any of these guys on the phone, but ChatGPT can imitate famous people with surprising accuracy. So I did the next best thing and had a conversation with the ChatGPT version of Klaus Schwab. It was a roller coaster ride, with a revealing but predictable ending. Here’s how it went. (Pardon any typos, I wasn’t editing in real time as I asked questions).