Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

0:00
0:00

Obama says presidents shouldn’t watch TV and should stay off social media

President Barack Obama spoke at an event on Wednesday in San Francisco hosted by software company Splunk. Obama discussed how tech can help play a role dealing with critical issues like climate change and health care. The event came a day after President Trump held his first Bay Area fundraiser.

President Barack Obama didn’t mention Donald Trump by name on Thursday during a talk in San Francisco, but he clearly referenced his successor when he suggested that two things a president should avoid doing are watching TV and social media.

Even without invoking Trump’s name, he was taking on the agenda of the current president in discussing the urgency of addressing climate change. Speaking at an event hosted by software company Splunk, Obama hit on a number of areas where technology advancements can benefit society, including health care and even traffic congestion.

But, following up on a key issue from his eight-year presidency, Obama said there’s no bigger challenge facing us than climate change. While technology can solve certain issues related to the changing environment, ultimately “it’s a moral decision that we make,” he said.

“There are a handful of issues that if we don’t get right we have real problems,” Obama said. “Climate change is a big problem.”

His keynote comes a day after President Trump held his first fundraiser in the Bay Area since becoming president in 2017. The $1,000 to $50,000-per-plate event on Tuesday was at the home of Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, and attracted protesters with a giant inflatable baby Trump.

One of Trump’s key efforts is rolling back Obama-era regulations, most notably those related to environmental rules. The president said on Wednesday that his administration is barring California from setting its own auto emissions standards, setting up the latest struggle over the administration’s push to unravel restrictions on businesses. California has been insulated from many of Trump’s efforts because the state insisted on setting its own strict standards under a federal waiver issued in 2013.

Society has to make the decision “that we are going to mitigate as much as possible this problem that we’ve created so our kids and grandkids and the human family can manage,” Obama said.

It’s a friendly audience for Obama. In 2008 and 2012, he won more than 83% of the vote in San Francisco County and at least two-thirds of the vote in every nearby county. Those numbers stayed fairly consistent in 2016, when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton captured close to 85% of the vote in San Francisco, though she lost the election.

Obama’s visit to San Francisco comes as tech giants Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple face heightened legal and regulatory scrutiny for potential anticompetitive practices and amid the continued fallout from the abuse of social platforms by foreign actors ahead of the 2016 election.

While the former president didn’t weigh in on the antitrust debate, he did offer a personal anecdote about how smartphones have been great for keeping in touch with his two daughters, who are now in college, and connecting society at large even though there’s a broader crisis in how social media is dividing people and leading to loneliness.


One-sixth of the economy


One area where he sees tremendous potential for technology is in health care and reducing the inefficiencies in the system. With health care accounting for one-sixth of the U.S. economy, we should expect much better outcomes with “very modest improvements in how we deliver customer service to people who are sick,” he said.

And we should be investing in solutions to use that money more efficiently so we’re both less sick and have more capital to spend elsewhere.

“Almost our entire federal deficit, at least when I was president, can be accounted for by what we spend on health care versus what other industrialized nations spend on health care,” Obama said.

“That’s all money that could be used for early childhood education and rebuilding roads and bridges an cleaning our water and putting young people back to work. Those are wasted resources that I think big data can really capture in a powerful way, but it does require some guardrails and thinking through what the framework is to protect patient privacy.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
×