Transcripts For CSPAN2 Books About Technology 20240713

Business professor amy webb argues Artificial Intelligence is giving too much power to big corporations. My job is to model risk and i focus on technology and i come back to the same nine companies. They have relationships with universities and it doesnt mean that there are not other Companies Like salesforce or guber that are not doing Amazing Things they are also building the frameworks and theyve got the code bases. All of the roads lead to this end of the challenge that i have is if it is the case that Artificial Intelligence is not just being built to create a better microwave, although that is cool but to optimize our lives using a. Companies that dont look like us and dont have the same worldview as assess their publicly traded companies but i lived in china and japan and anybody that watches does publicly traded companies are still under the thumb of beijing aso there is no escape. It is because you are in lockstep with the Chinese Government and that matters because they had a brilliant person at the helm. Its a very effective leader and longterm planner. China has a culture of longterm planning. You could go back through history and look at it with the big Strategic Initiatives and fiveyear plans and see how all of them never amounted to anything. We have a person in power and Leadership Team around who really understand technology. It seems like an Infrastructure Initiative in exchange for the deft diplomacy all around the world, silk road as well as latin america and with most people dont realize that this isnt just about the building physical bridges and roads it is a digital component as well. 58 countries are part of the digital side. They are getting chinese five ge and Cell Technology and also getting something called the social credit score system. So there are parts in Southern China right now where he might be at an intersection and if you jaywalk which is a legal, cameras will recognize who you are. You could have your face covered or be obscured, but the systems are very, very smart. And if they can recognize you by foster, i held you are walking. If you cause an interaction, your face gets put up on a digital billboard at that intersection along with your name and where you work and that information is transmitted to your employers and family members and if youve done it more than once, you might be told to report to a local Police Precinct and you are denoted so your total score is a chinese citizen is taken down a few notches. Theres opportunities to earn points if youve done something good. Somebody can report the work and then you might get a few points of. This is a program that is intended to be national that hasnt rolled out nationally and you may be saying to yourself i dont live there so this is interesting but who cares. Well, let me tell you why this matters. First of all, the system already has presented 17. 5 Million People from buying airplane tickets. More than 17 Million People last year couldnt fly. 5. 5 million couldnt buy a plane ticket and 300,000 who did a great job at work, their scores were too low and as a result, they were disqualified from standing up to management positions. And these are not just ethnic minorities being discriminated against. This is a shot at huge social control. You had me at talking microwaves. I dont know why all of this necessarily matters to me is the reason that it matters is the bri is if it is the case that they are aligning themselves with all these countries around the world many of which are economically vulnerable or they are vulnerable for any number of reasons because of Climate Change because theyve got political unrest and they are inching towards authoritarian leaders of the social credit score system is a good option for those places. It helps keep the populace in control and china is already exporting this to different places. Why this matters is because while we are fixated on warships and bombs and thinking about missiles in the sky, but we have forgotten to look at if they wage an economic war which effectively blocks us out of places to terms we dont like or understand. This potentially prevents us from doing business or from traveling and potentially it reshapes the world in any sort of new world order where china isnt just a pacing threat, militaristic but it becomes a formidable global threat to all of us. In the United States, there is an antagonistic relationship. Its a transactional relationship on good days but more often than not between the valley into dc. So, what ends up happening is theres a lack of understanding, there are not enough relationships and the valley does what it wants until somebody gets upset and apologizinapologize and then the same thing again. Until one day when you have somebody like Elizabeth Warren who starts demanding that they are broken up with a. Remember when the company is broken up, this is in fact. These companies have multiple positions and their intertwined in very complicated and if the United States will continue to define this audience and if it is going to continue to be funded the Education System and technology, then who is going to build out the future of ai among other parts of science and Everything Else . You cant just break these apart. It doesnt work that way. And in the process of arguing back and forth in the process, the companies are competing against each other rather than collaborating so this sets us up for inch by inch little by little daily permission being taken away. I no longer have the ability to back the car into the garage with my radio up on full volume. Thats because somebody that is a part of a small group, part of a small d small aei tribe decidy were going to optimize my best healthiest wife and i was probably unsafe like you are probably unsafe even though weve never been in a car accident, so i no longer have control over the volume in my car. That seems insignificant, but there is a compound affect overtime and we are all part now of this process is unfolding in slow motion. Youve heard the analogy of the fraud in the path and the water slowly over time the wailing. I dont want to be the dead frog in the pot. And i realize that sounds like hyperbole, but there are so many things happening that weve turned a blind eye to that at some point there is no ideal way to turn this back. There is a Single Person in charge and at the moment we have no National Leadership on this issue. President of trump issued the order and we do not have the budget o or singular departmentn charge or Institutional Knowledge is spread throughout the federal government. And in the valley we have people that do want to do good by the enforced society but instead are constantly dealing with market demands. I dont think that the companies are evil. I dont think they intended to do harm. Weve gotten ourselves into a situation where the system is broken. Weve opened up archives to look at programs about technology. Next, anna wiener recalls her experience working for technical startups. The company that i worked for in San Francisco i was 24 and when i joined i was 25. So a worldly experience. And its an incredibly hard thing to do but many of them have dependents or that or whatever. I do not envy anyone in that position. His sympathy. The behavior that i saw institutionally as well as individually was more the result of a structural position than an individual failure. [inaudible] its not to be coy or offer a puzzle more than to suggest the incentives of the Business Model in the industry and i feel like i might do this with my own book like an American Girl doll someone read my book and mentioned i talked about how early members of my team walked into the Conference Room and our manager asked us for the five smartest people that you know. Why would they work here if it doesnt make sense there were so many other interesting things to do. These people are smart and talented and interested in other things, im here because i dont know my purpose in life and im trying to figure it out. They should have an economic value, but anyway this is the anecdotes that im telling in the buck. The first time i heard this texted me to say they must have read it on the blog post and so i feel like there is this thing that happens that has to do with the intellectual culture that i would call antiintellectual. It has to do more with people getting Business Advice and they have a ton of money and accountability to their investors and responsibility to their employees and they read a post this is how you can scale hiring and get people to set the tone for the company. Pay eight debate with five to 8,000 a. The industry has value and in the excellent book and investigation of uber [inaudible] it available at this bookstore. In the Business Model and business incentives they are shaped with Venture Capital and speed and scale within industry that has been here for 25, 30, 40 years or longer and you kind of get this product and expertise over the consideration of the iterative complex. I dont know what im talking about. Im so sorry. Im just kind of going for it. So i guess im wondering if theres parts that you take with you. You get this a lot from folks that i can think its unabashedly positive thing and in questioning that, its kind of dangerous sometimes. [inaudible] this is like the heart of the book. I dont know if i were t would k and appreciate the same things. I happened to be the right age to be a sort of ideal employee. What i admired and appreciated was the come artery into collective project if you will. I think that is also part of the problem but there seemed to be some potential in the one it just replicates how the structures that exist and i think that theres one more thing i did enjoy and appreciate about the startup culture. I think it is very earnest and as someone between the deep painful earnestness they might be wrong but i genuinely believe they think they are doing good for the world and i trust them when they say it and i think what is missing is more of a the problems are systemic. I dont think that they are individual. Do you feel like someone i feel like people say it wouldnt exist if they didnt have this crazy culture. Should it exist [inaudible] do you see one that is related to the incentives are of the industry that could potentially be forgiving of someone like that . You are gaining it back in your company and have to hit the next level whatever that is. For most they can get kind of desperate and have to do things and i dont know i think it is just linked to how this works but i also think this justification. Im not saying this is wrong to have your own reasons for doing a lot of this stuff. I do think that people are in the same position when they are not assholes. Youre probably familiar with they are using the same mechanism pointing out the request for somebody to come pick up this soon, delivered to the address into the platform is participating in the exchange by recording when its picked up and delivered executing a payment scheduling the address. That portion of the work is automated. But considering for increasingly we are aware because we can see those. If i said content moderation i dont think anybody would know what i was talking about. So now you know it is a job people do and provide a service to the training intelligence could certainly we are focused on a vast World Business started conducting businesstobusiness services below the surface of anything that you would ever see of any consumer and that is the work im going to talk about today. Its the world of editing, testing, it might be familiar to some of you in the room. Many of these do drive Artificial Intelligence and the clean data and most of you in the room know what im saying when i say that. But importantly and increasingly seeing the number of jobs it is quite hard. We are just going to keep a person into the moment of the Service Request and textbased so any time youve gone to a website and have a window popup you know that its a mixture of the script. So we had a person doing something on the spot that cant be quite completed some references that come to mind is just places that plug together. Certainly we could have manufacturing but could it add the button and the boat, for quite some time usually a matter of decades that is the important thing to take away. Automation eventually made it possible for us to go away in some cases but in others is the cost and reality of the paradox of automation that we call this being too sophisticated for the textile machinery to be able to consume through automation and a person was kept around. But its also in the world of federal Contract Labor so we used the example of the women that were made famous in the film Hidden Figures who could ask the time be brought in and it was a reference that quickly when they fail as computational experts eventually disappear they could be let go. Was it less valuable or did they even have a way of looking at employment precisely because theyd already moved forward an idea of what it was to value work, it was a particular profession and also a particular embodiment in this profession, white men of privilege with a very specific role to play. So continue this lineage in the staffing and Temp Services i point you to the book of the economy quite literally brokered undervaluing and labor because it was mostly young women who were collegeeducated and they made great office girls at the time but they were also expendable. By the time we get to the 80s and 2000 and off shoring of knowledge work it becomes harder to make the case that people are doing something precisely because they are doing work also being done by workers in the United States. And it becomes much more obvious that this is a question of labor arbitrage just as educated as anyone in the location of generating the request for work. And i often lament the case against microsoft and the question of what do you do in the case of employment that is necessary for a period of time for this project driven and it might be something where you need somebody with a specific kind of language expertise and coding expertise, but you know you are not going to need them for more than 12 months or 12 weeks for 12 days. What role do they have to tell e that worker at the time we get into the category so it is important to note the post 2000, Silicon Valley and especially 2001, what happens effectively we have the. Com bubble burst and there is that moment that was settled without caselaw that will leave questionable what to do with people as they will be held for a career and they came up with this in the settlement with federalist practices that treat the Management Systems that often dont leave them with the protection beyond the 12 month contract to be able to say i am employed and these benefits come with my employment. With the growth of the Service Industry and the staffing industry that serves request for needs. And lastly to see the shift toward all of the information economy that involves people with Information Service work. With coding and other valuable skills that take a great amount of training. But think about what it took to put up a website in the 2000s to hand code html how many do you know what im talking about . Now thats completely done with software. At that time we paid quite a bit of money to build peoples websites. That was my first work as 1099 so keep that in work of what can be augmented and with that complex communication that is beyond automation that is the question so beyond that cost of horizon for that human touch for some amount of time. So with that studying that which works with the anthropologist its hard to find the words to begin but looking at case studies to identify groups of workers to show the inside of their black box and how they organize the work what does the workflow look like and with the mechanism that can build out the Artificial Intelligence. The best way to describe is to talk about how i came upon the idea to write the book in the first place back in 2015 there were a number of terrorist attacks and the largest terrorist attack which killed over 130 people that it was found out after the fact that a lot of these were organized so they guy involved in working with defense agencies. It was a rough start in the beginning. Despite the fact that they have active on facebook. But a few years later facebook, google, youtube and amazon came together for a Global Internet forum to talk about how you could fight terrorism explicitly. This was something that was organized by the Tech Industry and for the Tech Industry. But again a lot of cooperation with government. That a few more months we saw a series of hurricanes korea hit puerto rico and wiped out the power grid and cell phone coverage nobody showed up who showed up . Those that came forward to build google showed up to provide internet and telecommunications coverage. And at this time i thought what is going on with Tech Industry there are just doing spreadsheets and calendars and app but getting involved in the core mission of used to be the full responsibility of government. Diplomacy counterterrorism Citizen Services and i thought there has to be a better way to talk about them than just tech maybe they have a role to play in geopolitics. So the problem was the term nonstate actor had eve all into a bad guy so i started to study where the turn happened although do some look at tech as bad guys. [laughter] but as recently as 2010 the dictionary of social science to find nonstate actors like the un and nato so even then they were not considered terrace. Sometime around 2012 they started to see this term used to reference al qaeda and then eventually isis. Nonstate actor was taken with bad guys. But clearly the Tech Companies were not nationstates either. So maybe its another way to talk about them so i introduce this concept of Internet Companies Internet Based Companies working outside of their mission that used to be the domain of nationstates and infrastructure. I wrote the article in 2015. And to say its a little bit of a stretch and i put on hold but then after Hurricane Maria is that i think theres something to this and thats what i put the article out there and why are published and it turned into this book. What about those who have philosophic concerns like volunteering or cisco or huber . Yes its a really good question actually dont put twitter in this category but i do put tesla which might be surprising in some one in some ways emily looking at how Tech Companies are expanding outside those Digital Services into what used to be the territory of government. You dont see huber getting involved in counterterrorism yet or at the moment microsoft is very deeply involved in the pharmacy you dont think of cisco having a stake in National Treaties so this is the differentiation and also people have asked me what about international Companies Like cocacola . Mcdonalds . But neither one of them are opening a Counter Terrorism department. Facebook has a larger Counterterrorism Department than the state department but it does seem strange one it doesnt seem strange that they word so thats why i thought i would Pay Attention to. Those that qualify google amazon facebook apple and microsoft why tesla . One of the things i look at in the book is not just how Tech Companies were expanding into governmental domain but in real life in physical infrastructure and services. This is something that tesla and elon musk and his Sister Companies is really doing. And with those partnerships and governments for electricity and now using space with star link there is a lot of endeavors there no longer just looking at prime products and Services Like cars but changing the way we think about public infrastructure. So for instance the Boring Company has highspeed rail in chicago spirit thats a branding mechanism that elon musk objects to. One of the questions we have private Sector Companies in charge of public infrastructur infrastructure, what happens when they decide they dont want to make it available for all . This is one of the reasons i talk a lot in the book about teslas work in puerto rico they stepped in at a time when they really needed someone and the federal government did not. But they are not under any obligation to stay. They dont have the responsibilities the government has to provide equally and fairly access to services. So you write what are the beliefs . What distinguishes these companies is that a number of people that work there there are large enough contingent to make a difference are driven that technology should be used for good. So if you take google for the department of defense on a very small contract called project maven how to apply ai to the Recognition Technology , this is a very small contract for a hands on a handful of people but when people find out that this is happening the number of people resigned in protest a companywide letter circulating and google back down and they let the contract expire. A significant portion so they want to see them do good. This is something that i think one of the interesting features of these companies that of course they are interested in the bottom line but you do hear about internal employee protest when the company does something that they dont think aligns with their core belief that is used for good. And its one of the challenges with this dynamic we may hear them on the sidelines and say yea google. But we do have a role as citizens to directly influence our process. We will come back to that in a minute but based on your experience and what you talk about in the book and talk about the governments relationship to netscape. So can you start by recounting this episode in the book i have not read about before with the social Media Companies and Tech Companies and how that went . Spent there was an attempt by the Tech Industry up through 2018 to reach out to Law Enforcement and federal agencies to work with them to figure out how we meet the challenges we all face together and Government Entities have been a little slow to respond. There is a meeting held in which the key players and others invited the department of Homeland Security and offered a lot of solutions of their own strategies terrorism and the platform and the Misinformation Campaign and in response they were met with violent so the next time they convened they did not invite any governments to the table. I think in 2020 we will see a shift from the Defense Sector to reach out very aggressively to get them to work with them. But for the chief Security Officer at facebook who is now at stanford put it well and said a local Police Department may be hardworking and strong but you would not ask another Police Department to defend against the invading army. But that is what is happening in the tech sector we are looking at the Tech Companies to set up their own counterterrorism unit units. It is an interesting parable of the government standoffish this that they cant get its act together to participate in the Tech Companies will do whatever they want to do that is a very valuable point because that presents a bit of a problem because we know dc and congress does not and cannot keep up with tech we had the septuagenarian lawmakers made their career of medicine or law or Car Insurance but zero knowledge of technology remember what during the hearings last year Lindsey Graham asked if facebook is the same as twitter or how does facebook make money it is clear he has a bit on the platform at all. They can hire better staffers but do you have thoughts how the government can be smarter with its relationship with the people in charge to oversee the agencies to know what to ask fo for. That is a question if there is a couple of different ways we need to think about it. We need to make sure we are putting people in congress who do understand the importance of technology not just the ancillary locale but as a power player domestically and geopolitically thats number one we are starting to see an influx of younger more Diverse People running for office. So i have to hope within a few years we will see the nature of people representing us. But i also think those that are currently in office is not a surprise that they are passing in our daily lives we have 2014 election and the Misinformation Campaign from foreign actors that was two years ago we still missing congressional action there is no excuse other than an appetite without peoples understanding and even the people themselves dont grasp all the technology they certainly have access to resources they can learn or help inform themselves better on what to do. Its hard to be passionate if you cant grasp and apparently he doesnt want to. [laughter] so talk about the work of those who are staffing up and anti bigotry and prejudice groups what do you think of that imbalance that exist for what they can do here and abroad and what you think there is a certain imbalance of the First Amendment . We have those that can impose regulations. Something i was talking about to the French Embassy earlier that they have robust hate speech laws in france but to say nothing of the First Amendment. He looked at me in a wishful way and i looked at him in a wistful way that there needs to be some kind of movement from the extreme ends of these things. There is no mistaking very serious hate speech for anything other than what it is what its like yelling fire in a crowded theater. So those extremely examples of hateful content that you cannot regulate them in some way to label them of not taking them down. So then to label the content that is problematic with the information about the coronavirus to be potentially is suspect and this is one way to make sure consumers are more informed not just stepping away from the internet completely. Do you have any thoughts of that is working or can work . It is still early days youll have to study the impact i remember a few years ago asking the ceo of google at the time what the thought was if it took a heavier hand to identify the content and said we dont censor anything we can do you rank that so it comes up to the section of the fact to the sections what makes these companies interesting from a citizens perspective we are not in a position to say those algorithms we dont see the results and to do good job. At a party wallflower stands in the corner but people cannot view that it has to do with the elements that makes action on the interactions online from physical world and how much that is woven into our daily lives so with that physical and Digital World interactions to make clear and that title. You say looking at your preferred way to interact with the internet is and she wrote a book about it are there other specific places online that you consider yourself . Where are you working these days . I would say i never had a reddit profile but ive spent a lot of time reading about it. But actually it was very sweet and unexpected but then there are those that are created people face seeing homelessness that is somewhat of a layer of anonymity as opposed to real names necessarily and i dont participate myself i have worked on meta filter there are a lot of communities that i find useful information wise so in the book with the chat rooms and Message Boards but before i leave the post i would definitely possibly months to make sure. So i am noting the title. You can choose to sit down you not require you to participate. But that point of read it is so interesting because one of the weird things i will admit i have a fair amount of legal advice as a lawyer which is probably like im causing myself pain. Or mid asked whole . Which is funny because that has gotten a lot of peoples way to interact with this form of internet where somebody will post something very ridiculous like mid acyl and the people respond on twitter and then they depart from what the initial post was made. That is such a classic example of how it is usually quite bizarre and he did it is always on reddit but another platform like twitter there is already this underlying irony attached to it to be above the content so you cannot be too sincere about things so what is incredibly funny about that with twitter is in the book i talk about i felt i was too much of a jerk i remember thinking look at all these nice people sharing what they are eating for breakfast and why am i not a nice person to not sure these peaceful moments of my life and make these weird jokes and now i feel i am overwhelmed with that edge its almost the element of distancing yourself from the platform that if you can laugh at everything you are not so entwined with personal distance from what you are doing there. That can be a way to distance yourself not as a vested and it will also take someone online its not a lack of investment im not less invested in fact i am more invested than those people to get that sense of distance. So in terms of the idea of becoming a user so what you talk about is facebook which i thought is particularly interesting because of the offline profiles for those who are unfamiliar it is the ultimate with that offline profile if they dont want a facebook profile and then people construct the profile for them for all the things they do even if theyre not on facebook so generally thinking of ubiquitous tracking on the web and how does that change the experience of being online generally . Thats another element of the title that really its not something that is possible its designed to track activity those are just part of the function of the social network especially Something Like facebook where the profit is attached to having data on the users so thats another element to have that advantage that you can walk away and perhaps if we dont have that ubiquitous surveillance cameras. [laughter] so to switch topics a little bit one part of the book i read was a lot of interest of a broader clash out there so as someone who actively know these participants, i was appreciating the humiliating one humility with which you approached it to say you will resist the urge we have a grand unified theory why its more likely than those commentators in new york so i will not ask you to read the grand narrative but it seems like maybe its a little bit overly kind to me. Looking at that organizing that you highlighted to see a real lack of it with that class analysis that would bleed over into the pipeline problem that we associate with conferences and the way in which there is a very different version of white feminism that you may have seen those from the commentators but at the same time it is a version of white feminism there were some bright spots and to be positive about that. But i would be curious of your process a real moment i thank you are reflecting not to come out as nostalgic and more generally your views like their own reflection. Absolutely that was a intense moment and eyeopening because at that time i was based in new york and then it became unavoidable on platforms like twitter and facebook and that professional feminist media at the time was addressing those intersectional elements that went into the harassment and some of those resources that i found were pertinent that just seemed so much beyond the presentation of gender and the quality so that period of time you can see with the activism like black lives matter i remember the womens march 2016 to say we have come so far with that basic understanding of inclusion that would have been radical three years prior to feel that much more broadly. I am always hesitant to name certain factors more than others but i do think as problematic as twitter is in the major platforms are, the nature of having Something Like twitter to turn topics somebody could create a and then to have the personal experiences and to have that the Community Element and then to push forward some with lots of ideas but i feel those platforms who are designed for everyone, are very dangerous. But it is a tradeoff so to see the experiences and their experiences and arguments are part of the conversation on the part of twitter that was having those hashtags. So the white women where the key. And the turning point for the activism, it is something that i dont want to discount but i dont want to credit it too much i want to discredit twitters role that want to credit them because certainly they did nothing for that to happen as a company. Now we have kids growing up with all of this mobility with these mobile devices of smart phones and the internet, ipads, laptops, kids are now being given these devices in infancy in 1959 there was band from San Francisco but they have an album cover it was a wink and a nod to think of the evil impacts of television that they would warp kids brains and then the tv of the kids face in the little crib but actually this is available on amazon they have an ipad right in their face and there are party chairs, ride at the crib so we are feeding Digital Technologies to children before they acquire their language skills. So neuropsychologists know that there is something called blaine one brain plasticity that childrens brains are malleable like plastic. In what you put into them for what they are exposed to they shape that neural pathways of children what is the outcome of what will happen that are acquiring Digital Skills before acquiring language . And all the input happening and parents also have the tv on at the same time and most report they have others going on at the same time so all of this stimulation with all of the noise and sound and visuals what does that do to attention with these neural pathways that are shaped with all that input . We dont know yet and that will be determined on the horizon because thats where were at now with Digital Technology and a steady diet of that being fed to children. We can say they are rewiring brains and that is where we are at. People are coming untethered. That they have so many choices that i have worked as a researcher to develop their products and to match People Better when i first started. So what is happening now is eharmony is a matching service for people are just swiping and it becomes a game. But what has happened it is presented to young people with the idea with the unlimited sea of choices in front of you in terms of romantic relationships. So then just to thank you have just the right choice for you but what happens and we see this in consumer psychology that there is a paradox of choice it is funny but the more choices that you have it makes it more difficult to choose. They did a study if youve ever been in a store or costco if they are giving out samples of food or cheese or something they set up a samples of jm first they had 24 varieties and they said heres the jam try it then they would get a coupon to buy a jar after that. The second day they came back instead of 24 they only gave six and the same coupon to buy the jar. Common sense says the more choices that you will find it there. But it turns out thats not the case. They were only one tent is likely to buy any jam at all if they have more as opposed to when they have less. So were in a situation now it is called choice overload the more choices we have it makes it harder to choose anything at all. May be a little hotter or richer or interesting or somebody i dont fight with so they swipe is white but dont choose anyone at all. Half of americans are not in a romantic relationship and 65 percent of High School Kids have never had a romantic relationship now. If you go back to world war ii a lot of people married their High School Sweethearts but they dont have that now. It is changing the dynamics of everything. Another thing they are doing is it is easy come easy go. People just disappear. It is called ghosting and they never contact the person again or they dont text it may be that one thats what they are doing but the same idea of the swiping and the ghosting is now happening in the workplace as you go on monster this endless plethora of Jobs Available so now people are ghosting their employers thinking they can just get another one and another one and another one so the idea of the endless sea of choices to commit to something maybe theres Something Better or a romantic relationship to change that dynamic because of the endless sea of choices available. And what is happening is changing what adulthood means the sociologist that studied the markers of adulthood those five markers and hear what they are. Leaving home, becoming financially independent with a fulltime job, to marry and have a child, now set back at 1960, 37 percent of women have achieved all five of the markers by early thirties now its less than half the one third of the men. In a sense we are living in a period of extended adolescence and those qualities of fun tethering from the traditional markers of adulthood so some people say maybe we should just unhook but it is becoming harder and harder because in one sense now we have mobile phones they are baking in the qualities that are similar to the one armed bandit slot machine. We talk about gambling addiction you pull the arm and ding ding ding. May be a winner maybe you dont. I will try again. Then all the coins fall. The lights are going and the sirens that is exactly how instagram works in facebook you scroll on the slot machine sometimes the content is interesting sometimes it is boring but it keeps drawing you back in for more. So the same behavioral drivers that are the most predictive of people coming back for more are baked into social media now so it becomes harder and harder to put the phones down have you ever seen so we walks in and people check their phones sometimes they even feel the vibration even when its not even vibrating they just want to keep checking and checking sometimes a check them thousands of times a day. So the problem is im not trying to be amish going back to the horse and buggy days but i am saying the combination of our devices and conductivity to that from the destabilizing social structures have left younger people we have the highest rates of anxiety, depression that we have seen and 30 years. Im at the front lines of this my see it up close i know if you realize this but in college is now one quarter of students are on a psychotropic medication for mental disorders. So the key is becoming untethered means that we dont have the stable with their mental and physical health and so to reinvent that and how do we do that does we pull away from those social structures how do we provide stability for young people . Obviously we have a problem on our hands. I went through the computer revolution when i was a kid big old things that nobody could use i had to explain the difference between hardware and software. And then of Computing Technology that same problem with ai and data and it is back ai comes to us but we dont have control over it its best to get the Data Visualization by have the honor to interview hundreds of people to ask what are you frustrated about . Of technology can solve one problem i would it be . Over and over it looks like thi this. This is why im pretty sure i know what i am doing. I have been building Machine Learning systems for a long time. Over 30 years so i am excited by the human genome project with 100 milliondollar budgets for the government and building thousands of machinery models so who would have known . So many years later. So i believe this background has given insight and that something is missing coming up from technology to the center of the equation im honored and for those who have worked closely with doug because you can think of ai to bia. That is the center of the equation and i interviewed of the archetype what is the decision . Its an action or thought process in a complex world i dont know what buying that scarf does but it will have some impact but honestly i dont feel very motivated because it isnt visceral for me it doesnt grab my primate brain in a way that i really need to buy the hybrid car. I cannot see it and that data stack today is not giving it to me. This is my dog and training him to be a service dog i have had him pretty much his whole life hes 11 months old i had this awful thing happened to me a trainer is teaching me to train the service dog and told me of the behavior consequence and i said thats exactly what i heard those that i were interviewing always talking about the antecedent which is the context i say sit and then my dog says sit and as a consequence he gets a cookie. This is a reversal not just one way to think about how we might view ai and data but i will tell you how that happens in a moment but what i think this is the way to think about it to how humans think and have that much brain power. And that influence methodology. And then to have that Great Barrier the head of governments, businesses as they make decisions to help make sure they have the effect that is goods of those that i am working with that have to decide what crops to plant down the road if it will make them productive or what will happen with you were migrant workers. The situation has changed. If i acquire a company what price to charge so then you hear much of what we have here is the situation we will launch the product at this price and then down the road somewhere so it makes us special is through these payments of consequences and we need computer help a decision is imaginative process in the head and as we think through the actions in the context if you remember nothing else remember this template and that decision intelligence what the book is about i will teach you some today that you can take home thats if you stick with the talk. How do we make decisions today . I had a sense it was happening especially in a complex world going back to the Human Evolution we dont think of the consequences of our decisions very deeply we are much more likely to do social signaling and to be successful in society to be dominant or prestigious it turns out that is very effective to be hugely successful and thats what separates us from other species and that we develop behaviors and patterns but that the society of that cultural revolution to come up with those behaviors this is what we are programmed for to look at a prestigious or dominant person for the consequences and thats been true for a few millennia but the situation has changed first of all if there is a bad actor here they can subvert behaviors they can influence us to make decisions that benefit them but not us. Second the context is constantly changing to develop with this big ocean because it keeps changing the water flows backandforth at the societal and crowd level are no longer working these are complex systems with that feedback effect of winners take all patterns where Large Companies are artists get 90 percent of the benefit and theres massive inequality anybody that has worked with data who tends to focus on things we can measure is easily and we tend to overlook reputation and happiness and morale but id rather have a decision model that didnt involve something intangible. We must Start Talking to the cultural revolutionist and all the other disciplines to understand those factors it is a roadmap for how to do that. The other thing i didnt say the future is like the past and those with that situation so what do i do . I believe that ai and decision intelligence can solve the problem. I grew up in the. Of Technology Optimism and the internet word democratize remember . We had a dream and i think we realize that dream. Intelligence will have us go there i think we have created this data and collaboration and the internet and theres one more link that we need to start to make a big difference and that is vi we will talk about a little more practical right now. We start with people we dont say where is the data. We dont say we cant do this im sorry thats great but there is a huge amount of Human Knowledge with no data set at all we are good about knowing how actions lead to outcomes but go home and ask a friend who didnt come to the talk how they think of the context decision for those inter immediate effects leading to outcomes and then the context. So what i do is i sit down with a Diverse Group of experts old and young with gender and race and i say what are the outcomes you are trying to achieve . Companies have big projects who have never sat down and go through the outcomes. So i consult with organizations and i say what are you trying to achieve . And the list of outcomes is different for each person. You just need to have a process where you think what are the outcomes we are trying to achieve as a team is it net revenue after two years . Some type of a military advantage . Or one that doesnt create a backlash in terms of the psychological reputation of our country . What are the outcomes you are trying to achieve . Make sure you asked the question. Second going to the actions they dont have the time to have an open brainstorming session for those actions we could take to achieve those outcomes to all the creative side of the brain and that analytical side which is over here we dont have room for the creative side so spend some time being creative and then being analytical. Most decision models i believe if we democratize ai it is a pattern so some will not do it. So the decision i am facing today she said we have a Climate Crisis and the way to solve this is simple start worrying about analysis at the very least organizations all over the world there are trees will grow that is a biomass and if enough people do this perhaps on its own and she said the trees would do it but it will make a big difference i havent spent any money money on tree innovation yet so i cannot visualize what it needs to do to achieve that outcome. If i am going to use ai to benefit me visceral interactive fun experience so this is what i think is the future of ai. I hope we can do some of this in the basement and what are we doing in the spaces we are expanding with the actions we might take and letting the computer help us understand those events that leads to the consequences and also highly valuable at the organizational level. Now on booktv come afterwards macro weekly Interview Program at th with tod fiction authors being interviewed by guest hosts. Hosts. While new episodes are on hold due to covid, we are sharing some from the archives. This week former deputy fbi director Andrew Mccabe who appeared in february, 2019 discussed his career, the fbi coming of his firing from the bureau. He was interviewed by New York Times reporter adam goldman. All after words programs are also available as podcasts. Host hello, im adam goldman, reporter with the New York Times. Guest good to see you. Host thanks for being here. We know a lot about you. Youve been on it october, or some may say a redemption tour and we know a fair amount about you that you were in the fbi for close to 20 years. 21 years. Host you have a bunch of different positions,