Hunter-Gatherers: Jurors Assemble the Evidence

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Brad Milke
Tech.

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Brad Milke
It's Tuesday, June 11, and Hunter Biden's fate is in the hands of a jury. We start here.

The president's son declines to take the stand as federal prosecutors tell jurors to convict him.

Terry Moran
It's the burden in a weird way. Not legally, but in a weird way.

Brad Milke
On the defense, our team is standing by at the courthouse. We'll ask what deliberations are hinging on. The US presses ahead with a ceasefire proposal. Colleagues, today we voted for peace. But will they get buy in from the two that matter? And meet the newest form of AI, introducing Apple intelligence. The makers of chat GPT just got the invite to work on your phone.

From ABC News, this is start here. I'm Brad Milke.

I remember being shocked that a jury convicted former President Donald Trump in less than 48 hours. Like, think about it. This was a historic verdict on a divisive figure. How often do you get twelve random people to agree on anything, let alone on a complicated case? And yet this jury was clearly capable of rendering a swift verdict. Well, that's why this morning, all eyes are on Wilmington, Delaware, where a federal jury enters what is now its second day of deliberations. In the case of Hunter Biden, this all revolves around his purchase of a gun back in 2018 and the forms he filled out to do it, attesting, among other things, that he was not addicted to drugs at the time. This trial wrapped up with speed yesterday, and ABC senior national correspondent Terry Moran was, was there for it all. Terry, you were in the courtroom during closing arguments. I mean, what happened there?

Terry Moran
The closing arguments reflected this case. Prosecutors were methodical and they stepped the jury through the charges and through the evidence that they say they have presented to prove them. With slides, with quotes from Hunter Biden's audiobook, his memoir, beautiful Things, where he details in florid examples his addiction. And they used his texts, dozens of his texts around the time he purchased the gun. Texts that prosecutors said suggested he was out buying drugs. For example, I met the 711. Prosecutors said it was consistent with his practice of going to this particular 711 to buy drugs. So they really had a very buttoned down closing argument, all the corners neatly folded in. In contrast, defense lawyer Abby Lowell stood up and talked for an hour and a half, just kind of, it felt like throwing everything he could at the wall, hoping something would stick, that there was evidence that Hunter Biden was around that time trying to get clean, that there was no direct evidence, no one saw him using drugs in the day he purchased the gun or the day before or after. The problem with that is jurors got an instruction from the judge that this charge doesn't require the actual day using drugs to be an addict under the law. It just requires a pattern of behavior that jurors using their common sense would recognize. And so the, the closing arguments really did reflect this case. This is a, as prosecutors say, a simple case for them. And it's the burden in a weird way, not legally, but in a weird way on the defense, to show the other side.

Hunter Biden chose not to take the witness stand. And so it really happened in cross examination and in argument that there is another side there. He was trying to get clean, sincerely believed he was not a drug abuser when he signed that federal form.

Brad Milke
Yeah. Terry, the decision for Hunter Biden not to take the stand, I mean, that's one of the reasons that were that it's in the jury's hands so quickly. Right. What was the reasoning behind that?

Terry Moran
Well, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, and so the defendant doesn't have to prove anything. Of course, Hunter Biden has a constitutional right to remain silent, not to testify. And the jurors got an instruction from the judge, they are not allowed to use that against him to make any kind of inference from his choice. That said, he apparently did. It was a close call. We're hearing he wanted to take the stand to do what no one else can take the jurors into his state of mind when he bought that gun, that he sincerely believed he was not a drug abuser. The problem with that is it would have opened up to a wicked cross examination because the prosecutors presented evidence on cross examinations, sometimes of his own witnesses, his own daughter, through text messages, once again, that his behavior, they would argue, is consistent with the guy who was abusing drugs at that time. So there was just too much risk, as there often is, and he didn't do it.

Brad Milke
And so now, today, as we go into day two of deliberations, what could be the major hang ups in that deliberation room? Because I would say getting twelve people to convict a president's son seems like a tall order, but clearly wasn't impossible for the former president himself. That seems orders of magnitude more difficult.

Terry Moran
That was a complicated case. This is a simpler case. Look, there are three charges here. Two charges of lying on that federal form and one charge of possessing a gun when you are a drug addict. That is, in fact, against the law.

And so they'll have to work their way through the law and the evidence around that, and then they will. The hardest thing for them will be to determine if they can prove intent that, in fact, Hunter Biden, in the words of the law that the judge read to them, knowingly lied on that form, despite the defense's claim that he was trying to get clean. And, you know, frankly, like, he certainly relapsed, as he admitted in his memoir. But like a lot of addicts, when they go to rehab, when they get clean for a while, they're ecstatic and they feel, that's it. I've done it. It's behind me. And that's their case. That he was in that moment and sincerely believed he was not addicted to drugs. That'll be the hardest thing to get that sense, that conviction on intent beyond a reasonable doubt. He lied.

Brad Milke
All right, Terry Morin, really interesting case. And of course, we'll talk about all the fallout, whether it's acquittal or whether it's guilty verdicts or whether it's something in between. Really interesting. Thanks so much.

Terry Moran
Thanks, Brad.

Brad Milke
Next up on start here, not a single country voted against the US's latest ceasefire proposal, but there were only two votes that really count. We're back in a bit.

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Brad Milke
We talked yesterday about the four israeli hostages who have been reunited with their families after a daring IDF rescue mission within Gaza. Though this is not being called a rescue mission or even a raid, it's being called the Nusirot massacre.

We've now learned that IDF agents dressed as refugees to sneak into these buildings where hostages were being kept. There were airstrikes on surrounding areas as the operation got underway. And then as Hamas realized its hostages were being taken, they responded with rocket propelled grenades. Israel responded with bombs, all in this crowded civilian neighborhood. While Israel says the raid resulted in under 100 casualties, the Hamasran health ministry in Gaza is now reporting 274 people killed and nearly 800 injured.

Shopify
Kids, completely gray or white from the shock, burned, screaming for their parents, many of them not screaming because they are in shock, like, to what level of horror do we need to go before we finally do something?

Brad Milke
All this to say that even amid celebrations in Israel, many countries are still desperately pushing for a ceasefire? Well, yesterday a secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was pressing this case in the Mideast. Other american diplomats were also pressing for a ceasefire in the United nations. Let's go to ABC's Shannon Crawford. She works out at the State Department. She joins us now. Shannon, the US has been at odds with a lot of countries in its support for Israel here. So what happened yesterday, absolutely.

Shannon Crawford
Well, what we saw, as they're taking their campaign to pressure Israel and Hamas to take the ceasefire deal on the table, they took it international by going to the UN and forcing a vote on a US authored proposal supporting the deal.

Brad Milke
We must seize the opportunity before us.

We must speak out with one voice in support of peace.

Shannon Crawford
That measure actually passed with 14 votes in just one abstention. Russia. Russia has traditionally vetoed basically everything the US has brought forward in that chamber over the last couple of years. So this was a big win for the US as far as diplomacy is concerned.

Brad Milke
Colleagues, today we voted for peace.

Shannon Crawford
But once we get to negotiations, when you consider that it really doesn't move the needle much. Hamas came out with a statement supporting the outcome of the vote, but the militant group still hasn't issued an official response to the proposal. And the US also spent a lot of time shoring up support with Israel, who by the way doesn't get a vote in the Security Council.

It wanted to make sure that Israel could stand behind every word in that document that, by the way, President Biden says the country authored. So basically, there's just a lot of waiting going on.

Brad Milke
And when we talk about proposals like this and like the US led now ceasefire resolution here, like, what does it favor one side more than the other? Or like the US would say, it favors both sides. But I'm saying, is one side being asked to give up more here than they were a month or two ago?

Shannon Crawford
Really in this case, it comes down to how both sides interpret the language of the deal. Hamas has said over and over again that it's not going to agree to anything that doesn't result in a total ceasefire. Remember, it would be giving up all of its hostages, so therefore it has no leverage over Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that no matter what happens, you know, he's good with the short term ceasefire. He'll go through with that, he'll get the hostages back, but at the end of the day, he's still going to carry out his war and achieve all the military objectives that he set in the aftermath of October 7.

Brad Milke
So it's up to these leaders on both sides, I guess, from Hamas and from Israel to decide, like, are we actually going to go ahead with this? Like, can we see a handshake deal?

Is there one? Is one side under more pressure from their own people to make something happen here? Because we talked about Netanyahu's government kind of splintering with this huge resignation in the last few days. But Hamas also has a constituency. Right? Like, is there pressure for them to move the needle here?

Shannon Crawford
Absolutely. Hamas has something to lose by not taking the deal. They're under constant bombardment from Israel. Also, their diplomatic ties in the Middle east are strained. Hamas wants legitimacy just as much as an actual government does. So right now it has got ties with Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, a host of countries in the region. At least one of those relationships, its ties with Qatar, could be in jeopardy because the US is increasingly putting pressure on Qatar that really values its ties with Washington to kick Hamas's political wing out of the country. Now, us diplomats are a little bit reticent to do that. They don't want to shut a door on negotiations. But over the past many months, it's not been so fruitful to work with Qatar and Hamas to get anywhere because we haven't really seen the ball move forward in these talks in a meaningful way in quite some time. And then Israel's becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage as it's seen even its tie with its closest ally, the US, really come under significant strain.

Brad Milke
Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way.

Terry Moran
By allowing his political survival to take.

Brad Milke
The precedence over the best interests of Israel.

Shannon Crawford
Tvs around the world are broadcasting violent scenes of what's happening in Gaza right now. So they do also have a really driving reason to end this conflict as well.

But that's just one side of it. If you flip the coin, both parties have a reason not to agree to a deal as well. Us officials have acknowledged that Hamas leaders might see their position as being relatively safe. They're down in tunnels. They actually, you know, in a perverse kind of way, see themselves as benefiting by civilian deaths because it does spark outrage, it does turn governments and people against Israel. And meanwhile, there's plenty of speculation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is benefiting politically from this war as well. As long as it goes on his calculus, some say, is that he'll stay in power and a deal might draw the curtain on his time in office.

Brad Milke
Right. And that dynamic there that you're describing seems like what is frustrating the US so much that they see an actual chance to get something done here. As slow as some countries say the US has been, there is a chance to do something if both sides are actually willing to play ball. All right, Shannon Crawford, thank you so much.

Shannon Crawford
Thank you, Brad.

Brad Milke
Hey, how's it going? Hey, Rocky. One of the most jaw dropping parts of watching recent demonstrations of chat GPT is how you don't just need to type stuff to get an answer. This AI can decipher photos or even. And voice commands. I just need to know, do I look presentable, professional?

Shopify
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Brad Milke
Which could actually work in your favor. Now, it's not like voice recognition software is new. You can look at Siri or Alexa or any of those voice powered assistants. But for the last several years, if you've wanted to use them, you've had to learn all these tricks, all these very specific commands. Like if you said, play the start here podcast, Siri will hook you up. But if you said, hey, can I hear the latest episode of start here? Like a normal human might, she might not know what you're talking about because Siri software doesn't actively learn like an artificial intelligence system. Rather, humans have to teach her continuously what to look out for. That could all be changing, though, because yesterday, in a move that could make iPhones much more convenient or much more terrifying. Apple announced it is partnering with the makers of Chat, GPT. ABC's Mike Debusky covers tech. He's here to explain all this. Mike, can you just walk us through this announcement?

Mike Debusky
Yeah. So this came at Apples Worldwide Developer conference on Monday. This is their time to gather a bunch of people who make apps, app developers, and that type of thing together in Cupertino at their headquarters, basically to show off their latest software products.

Brad Milke
We're glad you could join us for.

Terry Moran
What promises to be an action packed and memorable WWDC.

Mike Debusky
And the expectation this year, Brad, was that Apple was going to make a lot of artificial intelligence announcements. And a big part of the reason that people thought that going in is because Apple doesn't really have a big artificial intelligence model like Google's Gemini model or like OpenAI's GPT four O model. They've kind of been quiet on the AI front as this hype cycle has been developing over the last year and a half or so. So the stage was very much set for some AI stuff, and that's exactly.

Brad Milke
What we got introducing Apple intelligence, the new personal intelligence system that makes your.

Terry Moran
Most personal products even more useful and delightful.

Mike Debusky
So what they announced was what they call Apple Intelligence. Now, this is an umbrella term for a bunch of different technologies, Brad, and that means that Apple is baking AI into a whole slew of different things, into iOS 18. That's the software that's going to run on the next iPhone, on Mac OS, Sequoia, that's their sort of desktop and Mac software. Things like Safari, which is their web browser, is getting AI enhancements to maybe summarize web pages for you. The mail app is going to be able to draft emails for you using this Apple intelligence model. And Siri, as you mentioned in the beginning, kind of become a little bit of a joke in tech circles for, like, not understanding you and saying, like, hey, let me look that up on the web for you. Kind of a perennial also ran in the voice assistant world. That's going to get a lot of generative AI technology.

Shopify
What does the weather look like for tomorrow at Muir beach? Oh, wait, I meant Muir woods.

The forecast is calling for clear skies in the morning near Muir woods national monument.

Sometimes it takes me a beat to figure out what I actually want to ask Siri. And now it follows right along.

Mike Debusky
They say, you're going to be able to talk to Siri in a much more naturalistic way instead of saying those canned sort of stilted and awkward words and phrases, you're going to be able to just have a normal, free flowing conversation like you and I are right now, and Siri will understand what you're saying and execute on those commands. It can do things like delete emails and summarize news articles, and they say you can even give it a picture of your id and it will take out the information it needs from that id and fill out a web form for you. So they're making some pretty big promises, specifically with regards to Siri.

Brad Milke
Well, and that's the thing. I feel like you're more often being like, okay, thanks, Siri. Than you were actually being like, thank you, Siri. Right?

Is there a sense of having this on the phone? Like, is that different than chat GPT is making its own app? Right? Like, how is this gonna be different from just, like, seeking out AI in any of these apps or programs that it lives on, right.

Mike Debusky
So when we talk about a company like OpenAI, which makes chat GPT, they make that available to people through an app, right? You gotta go out of your way. You gotta go into the app store and download it. You have to kind of make the decision to play around with that artificial intelligence technology.

A lot of people have iPhones and don't really do that. But now that this generative AI, this Apple intelligence, as they call it, is going to be baked directly into the software, that technology's going to be in front of a lot more eyes.

Brad Milke
For example, your iPhone can prioritize your notifications to minimize unnecessary distractions while ensuring you don't miss something important.

Apple intelligence also powers brand new writing tools that you can access system wide to feel more confident in your writing.

Mike Debusky
We are still sort of waiting to see exactly how this is going to play out in the real world, but presumably there will be little prompts to say, hey, do you want to chat with artificial intelligence about this? Do you want to get something to summarize an article for you or draft a text message for you? That's going to be in front of a lot of eyeballs. There are a lot of Apple products out there and a lot of people who use them. That's going to be a pretty big shift for those people.

Brad Milke
Wait, Mike, there is a big difference between me asking the chat GPT app, hey, I've got this medical condition that I just learned about from my doctor. Could you help me come up with a regimen to help me deal with the doctor's new orders or something? There's a difference between me typing that voluntarily into an app and then just my phone, knowing this about me and offering to do it, does this mean stuff about me that is on my phone is now going to be in the realm of Apple or like OpenAI offices or going to have access to stuff that's forever attached to my name?

Mike Debusky
Right. So, Brad, Apple did reference this in its presentation. First things first. They say that the partnership with OpenAI is kind of separate, right? The Apple intelligence is developed by Apple. This is a technology that they've been working on without any help from anybody else. If you ask Apple intelligence a query that it can't handle, or in their words, if they think that it would be better suited that a different model handles that question, they're going to pass it off to OpenAI's technology, which is called GPT four O. And they say they could conceivably bring other models from other companies into the fold in the future.

Brad Milke
Of course, you're in control over when chat GPT is used and will be asked before any of your information is shared.

Mike Debusky
So the idea here is that some of the tasks are going to be addressed by Apple intelligence. Other things, maybe things that are a little bit more out there. Stranger requests are going to be handled by specific models.

Brad Milke
When you use an Apple device like your iPhone, you are in control of your data, where it is stored and who can access it.

Mike Debusky
Apple says it's using what it calls private cloud compute. And that means that the servers that deal with the AI questions that they're receiving are going to be more secure. They run on Apple silicon. They say that independent experts have come in and sorted through the code to make sure that these things are private and not able to be hacked into?

The question, of course, lingers. You know, how is that going to work, given that some of this stuff is going to be offloaded to another company? But even still, Apple did nod to this in their presentation. Presentation seemingly putting privacy somewhat in the fore here.

Brad Milke
A lot of questions here, especially as Apple is often late to the party on things. It's just that they. They come in and then make them better than a lot of people were expecting and therefore more mainstream. So this is the moment you could imagine that a lot of ordinary people will now have AI engines kind of just all around them. We should also say you and I have talked about the discrepancies between blue and green texts before. Yesterday at this conference, Apple said, hey, we now support RCS texting, which means iPhones will read Android messages better. However, it still looks like they might be green. So, like, just stigma for stigma's sake. We'll see. Mike Debusky covering tech. Thank you so much.

Mike Debusky
Of course, Brad. Take care.

Brad Milke
Okay, one more quick break. When we come back, we thought humans were the only creatures who could do this, but there was always that elephant in the room. One last thing is next.

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Brad Milke
And one last thing.

What's in a name? Well, it must be a whole heck of a lot, considering in the history of science, we've never found creatures outside of humans that give each other names.

George Wittemeyer
Previously, we only thought humans would do this type of thing or could do this type of thing.

Brad Milke
That's George Wittemeyer calling from Kenya as he studies how animals talk to each other.

George Wittemeyer
I'm a professor in the department of Fish Wildlife Conservation biology at Colorado State University and the chairman of the scientific board at save the elephants.

Brad Milke
He says there are some animals, like parrots and bottlenose dolphins, who do use sound to identify each other.

George Wittemeyer
However, those two species imitate each other when they're trying to get attention. So if I was trying to elicit your attention, I would basically try to imitate your voice to get you to turn and pay attention to me.

Brad Milke
That, he says, is mimicry. It's a lot different from using an actual name, what he calls an abstract sound, kind of a random assortment of sounds that everyone in your group understands. Oh, we're talking about ham. It was just humans, we thought, until George's team put out a paper yesterday in the journal Nature, ecology and evolution that said, every elephant appears to have a name.

You hear that? That is the sound of what's called an elephant rumble. It's really, really low in tone. So turn it up. Let me play it again.

And as you listen to that deep, deep voice, you're actually only hearing half the sounds that the elephant is producing there. The tone is so low, the human ear can't pick it all up. Well, in hundreds of these recordings, George says over the years, they've noticed a pattern.

George Wittemeyer
Matriarch will give a rumble, a call to the group, and that call will elicit a response. Sometimes it will elicit a response from the entire group membership.

Brad Milke
These elephants are not speaking like humans would, but they're definitely speaking. Information is clearly being communicated in the tones of these rumbles. Some of them seem to apply to everyone, but other sounds seem directed toward just one family member at a time.

George Wittemeyer
Literally like 10 seconds later, that same matriarch gives a seemingly very similar rumble to the human ear.

And absolutely no one responds in the group except for one individual who's like a bit far away, you know, a bit farther away. Outside, the group rumbles back. So you sort of see this kind of thing.

Brad Milke
Like, hey, Alexander, get over here.

George Wittemeyer
Yeah.

Brad Milke
As they viewed the spectrum of these rumbles, they were kind of tricky to isolate because think about it. How often do you actually use someone's name? Like, if you're hanging out with someone all day and they look at you and talk, you know, who they're speaking to. Once researchers thought they had figured this out, though, they played certain sounds back on loudspeakers. And again, only one elephant at a time would respond to a given phrase.

George Wittemeyer
And so we were like, they must be using names for each other.

Brad Milke
Their working theory is that the matriarch bestows these names on her young. In the meantime, it opens up more questions for the animal kingdom, because if we're just learning this about elephants now, is it possible there are even more animals out there using names for each other? George says elephants remain uniquely social, so it would make sense that they're one of only a few species that do this. Plus, an elephant never forgets. So Mama elephant shouldnt have to tell you twice.

I like to think that if someone was studying us, like, thats how theyd learn human names, too. You just listen to the parents and kids because thats the time that someones like Bradley. Bradley. Bradley, come here, Bradley. More on all these stories@abcnews.com or the ABC News app. Im Brad Milke because im grown up now, mom. Ill see you tomorrow.

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Hunter-Gatherers: Jurors Assemble the Evidence

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1. Introduction

2. The Prosecution's Closing Argument

3. The Defense's Strategy

4. Jury Deliberation

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