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Video taking off 12x its usual first day

Can AI predict the future? Matt Bevan tests chatbots stuck in the past

The new If You're Listening episode checks machine forecasts against an Iran war, a British leadership upheaval and the AFL ladder, and it drew in hours what the channel's long videos usually take a full day to reach.

Channel: ABC News In-depthStory of Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 193,748 views a day, 12 times a normal first day on this channel (16,776).

Can AI predict the future? | If You're Listening | ABC NEWS In-depthCan AI predict the future? | If You're Listening | ABC NEWS In-depth

Matt Bevan's experiment is easy to explain. Take AI models whose knowledge stops somewhere in the recent past, ask them about a year they never saw, and check their answers against what actually happened.

The result, "Can AI predict the future? | If You're Listening | ABC NEWS In-depth," had close to 77,000 views six hours after it went up. That is more than four times what a new long video on ABC News In-depth usually gathers in its entire first day. The likes ran even further ahead: in those six hours the episode collected about ten times the likes a typical video here ends its first day with.

The description sets the test. At the start of 2026, it says, the US-Israel war with Iran, what it calls the UK leadership kerfuffle and the final order of the AFL ladder would all have felt hard to call. Yet Bevan finds that computers have become good at predicting certain kinds of futures. The tags point to ChatGPT, Claude and Grok as the models in question. From there the episode asks what that means for everyone else, and, in a turn that suits a show built on American politics, for Donald Trump.

If You're Listening is the ABC series that began as Bevan's podcast Russia, If You're Listening. It usually takes one tangled news story and explains it to Australian viewers step by step, which makes an episode about machines doing the guessing a fitting change of pace.

The episode also arrives as Tom Hartley's 7.30 reconstruction of the flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, as we reported here, keeps climbing toward 300,000 views.

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More from ABC News In-depthVideo taking off 14x its usual first dayTom Hartley reconstructs the flydubai flight to Tel Aviv for 7.30, far past the channel's usual startThe report on the Dubai to Tel Aviv flight that dropped sharply after a cockpit attack drew more viewers in seventeen hours than the rest of 7.30's same-night …Channel: ABC News In-depth · Story of October 2, 2026
The facts
Subscribers
2,450,000
Channel views, last 7 days
6,591,697
Channel views, pace per day
1,280,944 (on a normal day: 975,373)
Video published
October 2, 2026
Video views so far
76,884 (less than a day online)
Video views, pace per day
193,748

The numbers

The figures below show how quickly a single explainer outran the channel's usual first day, likes included.

the video's first day
usual first day here
16,776
this video
193,748
subscribers
2,450,000
no significant change in the last 7 days
total views
1,119,748,496
views per day
1,280,944
typical day: 975,373
the video
views
76,884
likes
1,849
comments
184
days online
1
compared with similar channels (subscribers)
euronews
2,580,000
New York Post
2,580,000
ABC News In-depth
2,450,000
CBS Evening News
2,420,000
CTV News
2,410,000
MIRROR NOW
2,340,000
As of October 3, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube
Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.
Developed with YouTube

💡 Test your knowledge

Claude, one of the AI models named in the episode's tags, is made by which company?

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