Take the Steering Wheel out of selfdriving cars and the brake pedal and everything else. This is not a insane as it sounds. The thing b about an Autonomous Car is if its working properly, the driver has nothing to drive. At in turn means the human behind the wheel is probably not paying enough attention to cake control if that became necessary. Bottom line say engineers say if youre going to drive, fine. Grab b the wheel, look out the window and drive. If youre not going to drive, if youre going to sort of monitor the situation and let the car do the work then let the r car do the work. The theory is the driver becomes a liability not an asset in this situation. Jimmy carl son is one of the worlds leading experts on selfdriving cars. Hes workeded at tesla, curiously at apple as well. And is now the Vice President of out information at neo, a chinese car company. Chinese answer to tesla. One of chinas most legitimate challengers. Well get to neo in a moment, but lets start with the question about selfdriving cars. Joined by martin at m. I. T, john of dow jones. What is neos position on this . Is this remove all of the stuff out of the dash or is is it keep it in this . Well, there comes a time when you need to remoove move the safety driver. We believe in building a technology where we want to have a fully selfdriving car. So our cars are still going to be Steering Wheels and brakes, but in order to be able to prove that car can drive safely, we need to enable our technology to a point where we can remove those. There is this, just just call it the uncanny valley, where theyve gotten far enough ahead, but not so far. Theres that magic point where you think is is it better to have the machine or the driver . We know its worse to have both simultaneously. Right . Yes and we believe that strongly, that we need to have a clear dif rentuation. Our products are level two. Were clear about that. We have some technologies that assist you with that driving but we try to make it clear that you are the driver. No ambiguity in that and really the system is there to assist you rather than perform the act of driving. It says wheel and pedals. You are going to use them if theres some kind of accident situation. I think the concern though is right if the car is doing some of it, thats when you start to look off here and the wheel may be a that bothers me. Because its confusing. How we get out of it faster. Well so neos approach, we have our level two wukt that you can buy today and were developing a level four. Level two is driver assistance. Cruise control, emergency braking, some steering functionins. Youre the driver and the vehicle is is tr to help you. In a level four, that car works in certain operational lanes. By itself and youre passier in that case. Theres a level three which is in the middle. Sounds like a danger zone. The problem with that is theres this ambiguity. Because if the driver is not responsible for the act of driving until the car needs them to take over and thats dangerous. Almost like this unnerving experience that i went through where lyft is going to be doing its autonomous pick ups in las vegas so they have the Autonomous Car. Im in it, but we have a safety driver and theres this kind of nebulous nature where they say the unpredictability of pedestria pedestrians. At one point, another car pulled in front of us and that required swift action by the safety driver. This is like the world we live in where we dont know where or whos in charge. That is one of the most challenging parts about Autonomous Car. Its a chicken and egg because once everything is autonomous, the act of driving the easier, but we live in a world where these vehicles are going to need to interact with humans and the its very difficult for humans to predict what another human is going to do. I think the description you just gave is probably a good example of that. At neo, youre building electric, Autonomous Cars. Which is the more important . Clearly every car maker is working towards electric and autonomous is something you have to. My car does, its not fancy, but it will do Adaptive Cruise control and sort of crawl along with the slow traffic. Which one is more important . Electric or autonomous part to the consumer . I think it depends on your time frame. Im a believer that electric vehicles are one of the things we need to advance to save ourselves from pollution and things that are harming us. Hopefully a longterm, a longterm effect that if dwoent take action, were going to be in trouble. The Autonomous Vehicle portion, that affects change now. You know globally, theres about 1. 25 Million People who die in traffic every year. There are things we can do every day. This is why these organizations are starting to put in you know Rating Systems to try to incentivise and mandate certain functioning to try to bring that number down, so were kind of just attacking both these important problems. So for now, were in china and eventually, you might come to the u. S. The timing although the next couple of years. And what do you think in terms of traditional car companies. Just came out with the taken. The sudan, 185,000. Are you concerned about the major traditional car maker competition as you move into the u. S. . So right now, we want more competition in this space. Im excited what lyft is going. With reuben. I think every additional electric vehicle thats on the road helps that adoption. Helps bring more consumers to a point where theyre ready to buy an electric vehicle aingd the same thing will happen in years now with Autonomous Cars. Let me squeeze in two more questions. You went from tesla to apple to you know where im going with this. To neo. So there are cars on either side of itment can we say that apple is working on an Autonomous Car . What im allowed to say is i work td on an autonomous system. Okay. I dont think im allowed to say that. But go on. You work at apple . Three years ago. Hes confessing. Yeah. Fortunately for me, ive been out of there long enough and everybody there respects it well enough that i dont know what theyre doing any longer. Fair enough. The other question i want to squeeze in is this is a chinese car made in china. But all of the rnd, every last bit, is down in san jose, california in Silicon Valley. I wouldnt go that far. We have a lot of really Core Technologies in china as well. I would say more of the advanced rnd that really takes advanced rnd is happening in Silicon Valley. Why is that . Well, this is how we establish the company. We have our office, headquarters rather in shanghai. Thats where our manufacturing is. Our Design Studio is in munich. Our Technology Operations in san jose. If you really look at that, we kind of have this center of excellence model where we really went for the challenge. Jamie is the head of autonomous driving at neo. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Up next, a daring entrepreneur tries to do what twitter seems to do. Make people play nice online. Welcome back to press here. There was a time back in the days of the early internet when we thought linking everyone in the world together so they could share ideas would bring peace and understanding. Instead, we got this. The Houston Chronicle chronicled a may 16 rally when about a dozen or so people waving rebel flag protested the islamic center. From facebook to twitter to youtube comments, people are not getting along especially when it comes to politics. Which makes the effort that opens cannibal all that more surprising. They working on a platform to allow americans the calmly and rationally discuss political issues and communicate their opinions to representatives in washington. Heres a look at countable. U. S. People are dee baiting the green duh gnu deal. Looking through the comments, mary says invest ng Renewable Energy makes Financial Sense and will pay for itself in the coming years. Adam counters the bill would kill free trade markets. Clean energy will come but you cant force it. Otherwise, sudden change has far reaching economic consequences. And nick say ocasiocortez is bat crazy. Dont let cows fart. Just stick a cork in it. Bart says the fup of the internet could be more about rational discussion, less about car parts. Thats generally what youre trying to say. Yes. Fair enough. How is bart myers going to accomplish what it seems like facebook, twitter and youtube cant . That is, thats been the last four years of our journey has been really honing in on that question and building a platform in technology that can really help to create a civil environment and the secret there is really not that secret. You know when you let people into an open space where they can be anonymous and there are no rules and theres parent in the room, some are going to act in extreme ways. Weve seen that a lot of the social networks really benefit from this. They can drive great businesses from making sort of the loudest person in the room the focus. Unfortunately, thats not, thats not us. Thats not the majority of people and i dont think thats really what were all looking for. Ironically, that is what drives eyeballs. And within countable movements in the platform we build, its a shigtly different mission. We want to give people a platform to get their voices heard and feel safe. Feeling safe is on the interin the, dift, so r for us, there are a number ways we do that. Which we can do into, but basically, it comes down to know, trusting theres an adult in the room. Somebody whos making sure bad actors are caught, but there are communi guidelines. All things that these other platforms could do have largely chosen not to do for reasons that it doesnt necessarily benefit their bottom line. That all sounds great. But in practice, ive seen most of the platforms, they sort of come in with these great ideas and well good intentions thep theyve got to make match oney. Then its like maybe the principles can xwo goh to the side while we make our next quarter. Return money to investors. How do you make money . What do you do with the data youre gathering and three, how do you know that mary is actually mary . And its not some kind of troll from macedonia or moscow . Those are all great questions. How do we make money . By licensing the technology that we build to do this very thing. We work with company, causes, organizations who are looking for an alternative to facebook. A safe place to bring their communities together. Where their communities can interact and engage with each other and do so in an environment where they dont feel like theyre subject to those types of threats. And those types of environments. Theres really a backlash forming to having your and its not just for these reasons. For other reasons. Keeping changed on your communities, your audiences on platforms like b cebook. Quoucould you work with some social Companies Like a facebook . Facebook, a white flag acknowledged theyre testing this idea of going away from public. One of their strength, right, to the point where its almost kind of a form of sensorship. Absolutely. We have spoken with and had various levels of conversations with all the Major Networks and theyre interesting. I think that there are intrinsic challenges in these types of changes youre talking about which represent millions in revenue for them. Making those changes isnt going to happen and it may be something has to force their hand. You talk about being the parent in the room and one of the accusations that twitter gets often is they will sensor certain things. And i fully support their right to do that. I make choices. I make the choices about whos going to be on this show. And the joke is get your own show. Thats good. I love it. But at the same time, you can introduce buyers by sensorship. I think i probably do. Opinions that might get suppressed. To my point, the accusation whether its fair or not on twitter. Particularly among conservative voices, oh, you know, i said this. How do you stay appearing neutral when you are trying to keep this thing rational . Well, the, theres a lot that goes into that. And i think you guys know this firsthand. Its not only about the community. Its about the topic of the subject, the presentation of the issue. As journalists, youre presenting issues and youre trying to do it in this fair manner. Is that always bias . No. Absolutely not. No. And then the responses that people have are not going to be bias. But i think the thing we have to realize is that the internet the tips the scales where as youre approaching an audience that i would call a bell curve of political views. You would say this is the moderate view and this is extreme. The internet flips that on its head and says the extreme, a lot of people in the room can easily get the most attention. And as a result, we need a different code of conduct. Our contract as a society of civilization was not built around letting crazy people talk. It was letting people who care about their communities come together and share reasonable ideas together in a reasonable way. The internet fundamentally has tipped that and early on, it was amazing. Didnt know it was going to happen. In a way, youre accountable. We dont really know how your system works. Your for profit. You answer to your investor. If theres like an independent body or panel that you have that comes in and regularly scrutinizes everything that youre doing, you know, Political Science professor, whatever it is or could you put that in . Then i think wed have a slightly more confidence in what youre doing. Sure. Its very fair. So transparently, we have a set of Community Guidelines in year two. The bulk of removal of content is really from the community. When multiple people will flag an issue and say its inappropriate rngs that goes to basically our team to review. Then we take the moderator. Its so hard the to put into practice. So difficult to kind of be an arbitrator of viewpoints and something that facebook and twitter continue to trip all over even though theyre spending billions of dollars trying to solve that problem. Sure and some may be scale that you are able to handle the amount of stuff thats coming in. I dont think so. I think thats the argument theyre going give, but theres plenty of, theres plenty of content theyre taking down all the time. They are reviewing virtually every piece of content with some mechanism of check. Be it adult content. Be it certain keywords and phrases. Certain types of activities. All things we check for as well. I think fundamentally is a choice. Its a choice by the platforms that it is, and theyll use that as an excuse. But the its a choice by those platforms that benefits them more to potentially have those extreme form of communication. On a closing note, you are a before you were doing this. Correct. Was this something you had always wanted to do . How does one go from tevo to trying to change the world through people talking pl inini on the internet . So, it is a bit of a change. So ive always been interested in sort of politics and Political Engagement and believe theres really Something Special about form of government and opportunities it affords us. At my core, i want that to be something that we can promote and so the ideas behind countable really came about through how you know i had an opportunity in my career where i could start a company and really take that risk. It kind of came together wonderfully and its been a, really extraordinary journey. You think about there are a lot of different elements to our ecosystem that we have havent touched on here. Including those who help us to create these types of communities, not just for accountable. But for many customers who are looking for these types. And youre right, we dont have time because ive got to make money. Im very impressed with countable. U. S. And i encourage you if youre polite enough to go on and be a decent grown up and use your big boy and girl words, you should. Up next, medicine may have really found a way to stop ageing. The fountain of youth. Well pause on that story when press here continues. Old age is over. Declares the cover of the m. It Technology Review magazine as the first antiageing drug hit the market. Silicon valley is sitting up and taking notice. Welcome back to press here. You may have heard tale that is some Silicon Valley execs fill their veins with the blood of young people. Sounds absurd, turns out its true. Others though grow old gracefully, two of those men join me now. Martin child of the San Francisco m. I. T. Technology review, john of dow jones as well. So i trust mit Technology Reviewment if i see People Magazine or something, the secret of youth, i may not pick it up. If mit Technology Review is talking to me about well maybe theres a secret. Im going to read it. Theres a whole bunch of Research Going on in various different areas that kind of move us towards the point at which you could choose to maybe live longer. And theres sort of a very different areas. One is kind of new drugs. As you said, like a group of drugs. They can revert ageing in mice and geese so the idea is can we create a dapations of that. Like treating ageing as a disease. Because if you treat it as disease, then new funding opens up in a way that becomes a different idea in doctors heads. Exactly and theres a practical epe genetic. You can switch genes on and off which can rejuvenate tissue. All u of this stuff is very early, but its getting to the point where were going to have some serious questions to ask and Life Expectancy people are living longer than ever before. Joking about what might happen. 21 years old. Never know. So i think its a really interesting question because what happens to the economy if we have People Living a lot longer. A bio exo skeleton. We arent quite ready for that. Were worried about ageing populations everywhere. The population here, this would extend the population of ageing even further. There would be some economic questions as well. What if there are a group that are able to take the 40 years old drug and another group that cant afford that at all. Absolutely. And the issue where medical efforts is called manuel, argues we shouldnt go beyond 75. Just period. There are lots of arguments which i wont go into here. Its a provocative view when he says the quality of life just declines from there. Economy, health care. Quality of life. Society. Massive. Its a very big spin. I have friends who are in health care who say much of health care now is is is elderly people and we love our loved ones, but weve gotten away from this idea that well no, but getting old and dying is a thing that happens and its, its awful and its tragic and its frightening sometimes, but its also the normal course of life and medicine is working so hard to try to extend out just sometimes by weeks. Right. Absolutely. So the question is what is the kind of cost benefit analysis of that and now we have sort of Solutions Coming through that looks like they may well be able to make it much more than a week. On a lighter note, john, you are working on a piece about how billionaires are buying up the alibaba cofounder, just spent the most amount of money spent. This kind of aligns with what the nba is doing. For the First Time Ever going to play games in india. Preseason games. The olympics are coming up. World championships going on. When he was on the show robert parra. U bik wiities ceo. Predicted this was going to happen about six years ago. Actually found out later that larry played for that team. So what youre saying is as hightech billionaires are interested in owning sports teams, sports leagues may have to create more teams . Well actually sports leagues as theyre moving into other countries and expanding their footprint into international markets, the values of the team are skyrocketing, which 4u9 putts billionaires in place with being the ones to buy the teams. The billionaires came up with this synergy between the team and their companies. So hes gone overseas and got a team with overseas appeal. They kind of feed off each other. Writing about sports and martin. Supervising coverage of growing old. Make your choice at the newsstand. Well be back in just a minute. Thats our show for this week. When were not working on press, were working on a new podcast calleded sand hill road. Its about Venture Capital in Silicon Valley. You can find it on all the major podcasts providers. My thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. Announcer this is a presentation of the olympic channel, home of team u. S. A. Welcome to the city. New york city where everyones got to get somewhere fast. Among all the regular hustle and bustle is a beloved form of movement here in manhattan, thats running. Thats what today is all about. Just ask Jenny Simpson because she knows how to run in this town. The last six years in