To not be the enabler and to also come forward . Its crucial. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Thank you for being here today to talk about a very important topic. We are going through a major sea change as a society, and i think that it hasnt been discussed yet. And so were going to start that conversation today by talking about the future. For all of humankinds history, weve been fascinated with the future. Weve wanted to know whats going to happen. Weve consulted astrologists and prophets and seers, rulers have called them in to find out how many offspring theyre going to have, whether theyre going to win wars. And it turns out that theres a reason that were fascinated with the future. And that reason is because theres no greater advantage than knowledge about whats going to happen. Not in nature, not in business and not in governance. If we can know what the futures going to be, then we can avoid danger, potentially lifethreatening danger. We can also get the jump on opportunity. And if we cant do either of those things, at the very least we can prepare. Knowledge of the future means, it means survival. It means a huge advantage over everyone else. And it has become such a central theme in literature, in art and such a pursuit of humanity that we owe it to ourselves to try to look at how Technology May be affecting our ability to understand the future. Because were kind of entering a period where we have so much data that that data ought to be able to help us make more rational decisions and better decisions in our daytoday life. Not just our daytoday life, but also leaders as well. So i got to thinking about all the information that we have, and most people dont know that were generating as much information as we did from the dawn of humankind to year 2003 every 24 to 48 hours. That means we go home from work on a friday afternoon, and that entire body and universe of information that could help us make better decisions and better choices has been generated by monday morning x. Theres no way our brains can really wrap around that. But the fact is that that data production is accelerating. Its getting to be even larger so that instead of bytes, were now talking about zetabytes. Its like when people start to describe this distance in space, you cant really fathom it. The brain doesnt want to try to understand it. But whats important about all that data and the analytics behind it is that were now able to take billions and billions of data points and connect them into sophisticated algorithms, and that technology is called Predictive Analytics. It allows us to take what has happened before and look at the nuances of what happened before and then forecast with incredible accuracy accuracy that weve never had before whats going to happen in the future. Let me give you an example of how accurate weve become in just recent history. It used to be just a couple of decades ago when a mother became pregnant we couldnt have told her whether she was going to have a boy or a girl. We didnt know the sex of the newborn. But today, think about this. In a couple of decades, weve become 100 certain, you know . Now using technology we can tell you if its going to be a boy or a girl, and its going whatever the doctor tells you, thats what youre going to have. Were no longer looking at the shape of the mothers belly or what kind of cravings she has at midnight. We can use science now to determine with 100 certainty what the sex of that babys going to be. But a lot of people, they accept that, but what theyre shocked about is that we can now predict with 86 certainty that you are going to trip and fall and injure yourself within the next three weeks. Now, people look at me when i say this as though im talking about science fiction. I am not. Im talking about the miracle of Predictive Analytics. It turns out that before you going to fall this youre going to fall in the next three weeks, you have a five centimeter per second change in your normal walking gait. Thats the precursor. Who knew . We didnt know this until computers, which are gathering all of this data, were able to put together these algorithms and say, look, weve noticed theres a relationship, a correlation between a persons walking gait changing and their inevitability of tripping ask falling. Now, lets tripping and falling. Now, lets look into the future and try to understand the effect this will have on the aging population that we face. Many elderly seniors lose their ability to live dependently when they take a fall, break their hip, break their leg, and it doesnt mend. And so whats important about Predictive Analytics is that we can ping their phone now, we can now say, hey, get into physical therapy. Your walking gait has changed five centimeters. Even a two centimeter per second change which is indices certain bl by the human eye gives you a 4045 probability of tripping and falling, never mind an 86 probability that youll fall within a three week period of time. Now, we should understand that that 86 is going to go to 87 , 90 , 100 over time. There should be no doubt in our mind that that is what technology does. But lets even look at other examples. Today i can tell you how much energy win farms will generate by tomorrow morning with almost 100 accuracy. Thats a phenomenon that we never had. Its a power we never had before. More importantly, opioid addiction has become a really big topic. Its in the headlines everywhere. We had, in 2015 we had over 20,000 americans die of opioid addiction. I just came from a Major Medical conference. It was a conference composed of the top spinal surgeons in the world. They all congregate once a year. And all of those surgeons were misled by bad Clinical Data that said that, you know what . You have less than a 1 opportunity to become addicted to an opioid. Thats why they began prescribing opioids, because it is a cheap and very, very effective painkiller. But now we know that the opportunity to become addicted was much higher than that, that those Clinical Results were incorrect. But people are very surprised and these surgeons were surprised that theres a Company Called fuzzy logics thats a Predictive Analytics company. And by giving a patient a questionnaire, looking at their medical records and simply looking at a few behaviors of that individual, they could predict within 8085 whether an individual is predisposed to become an addict. Now, let me be honest with everyone. We dont have cures for addiction. Anybody that tells you they have a cure, its not true. Im a scientist by training, and i will tell you theres no cure for addiction. We do have mitigations. We have ways to ameliorate addictive tendencies. But we dont really have a cure, and its a devil of a problem to try to solve on the back end. But imagine if you could use Predictive Analytics to eradicate 8085 of those that already are predisposed to become addicted. This is a tool that should be mandated by law that every single doctor and physician uses. And its available. Go to the web site of fuzzy logics and look at their clinical information. This also affects how retailers are operating right now. Predictive analytics is not only used by governments and by financial institutions, but its also being used by retailers. The largest retailer in the world when they discovered that warmer temperatures led to low milk production in cows, they began tapping nasas meteorological database so that they could get the jump on when that shortage was going to occur, when the temperatures were going to rise, and they could lock in milk prices ahead of all their competitors. So you can see what kind of a business advantage this is. And never mind genetics. Think about what we know at the time that a person is born. We can do genetic testing to discover if they are predisposed for soft earwax, even for violent behavior. For many cancers, thousands of cancers you can be predisposed for and learn about that at the time that youre born. Weve never had this powerful before. Weve never had the power to head a off problems long before they became a problem. And that, to me, is a great sea change. We dont have top opioid addiction. We dont have to have energy shortages. We dont the elderly dont have to fall. And every day our predictions are becoming more and more powerful. What does it mean when we get to the point where we are 99 certain an event is going to occur . Over the last couple of weeks, ive been asked a lot about the las vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock. The Mainstream Medias very interested in whether we could have predicted his behavior, and my answer is, yes. Its uncategorically yes. When the Mainstream Media comes forward and makes statements like he snapped, it came out of the blue, we couldnt have anticipated, we know that that is not true. And the way that we know that is not true is because after the cash aage occurs carnage occurs we start working backward. What did we discover . Well, let me tell you a couple of Early Warning signs. For one, he went out and purchased 47 weapons, and most of those weapons were purchased just prior to the event. So we saw an acceleration in weapon purchases. By the way, every single one of those was cleared by an fbi background check. So we had this data. The government had this data. We also know that in june of this year he was prescribed a drug that should never with prescribed never be prescribed to someone who has any potential for violent behavior. Did he have potential for violent behavior . He did. Because now when we go back through his medical records and his family history, we discover that his father was diagnosed as a violent sociopath. This is a heritable quality. Its a heritable disposition. Ing the fact is we can now see that there was a genetic predisposition for this because they have now, in just the last week, arrested his brother for child pornography and also a history of violent behavior. This is running in his family. But there were other indications. We are now looking at the erratic spending patterns that he had just prior to. Were looking at the multiple hotel rooms that he booked at the same time. Were now combing through not only his phone records, but his purchasing records as well, his credit card records, his medical records, his history. He lived in 27 locations in the last ten years. Very, very high, a huge danger sign. And in each one of those communities, he was considered antisocial and did not get along with people. And kept to himself. Now, people say to me, well, lets say we had all that data. Lets say we had all that information. Even up to the point when Stephen Paddock broke that window and is pointed his gun at the crowd he still could have had a second thought. He could have stopped. Free will could have stopped him. Its a possibility. So what are we going to do with that information even if we had the information . Are we going to send in the precog police like minority report . You remember that movie with tom cruise, right . That movie assumes we have no free will, we cant change our mind at the last minute, right . And we know that we do. We know that weve seen many, many circumstances where people had bad intentions, made plans, armed themselves and at the last minute changed their mind. And yet it is undeniable, it is inevitable that we will get to a point where we have the tools and we have the knowledge that an event like las vegas is going to occur with 99. 9 certainty. And the real question that this raises is does the government have a right to that information . Should we make that Information Available . What does that do to privacy . What does that what actions could they take legally . Could they go in and say, look, were looking at all this data, and it all adds up to the fact that you may commit a very violent act, and we need to stop you beforehand. Is that something that we should allow our government to do . Well, these are, these are Big Questions in my mind, and if you look at the history of humankind, you see that Public Policy always trails behind science and technology. This has always been the case since the beginning of humankind in former societies. Science has advanced at a increasingly faster velocity, and Public Policy gets further and further behind. But this is not the kind of thing that we can wait and react to. We cannot have leaders just react to this kind of power and this tremendous ability to look ahead and to stop very, very dangerous actions from occurring. And we do have that power now in the same way that we can prevent people from falling, in the same way we can prevent opioid addiction we can also prevent violence. We know at the time that someone is born they are predisposed to be a sociopath. We know that they are predisposed to violent or antisocial behavior. It doesnt mean they will become a sociopath. It doesnt mean that its inevitable. But it means we can take actions very early on to help those people so that they dont turn into a Stephen Paddock. So, no, steven paddock did not snap. No, it didnt come off the the blue. And, by the way, anyone looking for a motive, Mental Illness has no motive. I dont know what were looking for. Motive assumes some logical train of thought. This was a disturbed person who kept it together for a very long period of time. But there is every indication he was moving toward criticality. If we had that data, if we used Predictive Analytics, las vegas could have been avoided. Now, ive been talking a lot about all of this knowledge that we have about the future and the importance, the true meaning of what it means to be able to look downstream and know what is coming. And we have a moral and an ethical obligation to act on that knowledge. We cant deny science. We cant deny technology. It continues to progress. We may not like it, but its happening right now. So we have to make a decision. We have to form guidelines and laws, we have to make decisions in terms of what kind of privacy is, can be violated, what cannot be violated. We need to have that discussion right now, and more importantly when we do get to 99. 9 certainty, what is the ramification of that . For me, the fact that someone could come to me at a very young age, 4 or 5 years old, and look at my child and say to me your child is predisposed to become a sociopath, i dont know if i would want that information. Particularly being a scientist and knowing that theres no cure for that. And we dont know what the exact triggers are. But on the other hand, should i not get that data . If you give me that day, would i be more vigilant, and in some way would that vigilance change the way that my child was raised and who they became . These are all important questions, and i think that we owe it to ourselves to talk about them. I named my book on the verge because we are on the verge of9 of 99. 9 certainty. And when we get to that point, there will be major repercussions in how leaders lead and in how the person on main street makes their decisions. And i think the time to begin talking about it is now based on my experiences for 30 years in Silicon Valley and how fast this technology moves. Predictive analytics is on the move. I want to just leave you with one other example that i found absolutely profound and which triggeredded me to take the time off of work to write this book. In 2009 there was a Company Called recorded future. Theyre a scandinavian company. And they asked themselves could we go out and just looking at public day no other data, just public data, not getting into anybodys meddle call records or anything could we just look at journals and newspapers and social media and everything that was public, and could we determine that a countrys government was going to fall, that a revolution was in place . And what they discovered in 2009 was that a revolution was going to occur in yemen. And they knew it was going to occur within one year. And they were very concerned about this. So they put it out over the media, and, of course, nobody knew about Predictive Analytics, so what did they do . They looked at it, and they said, yeah, i dont think we need to worry about that. And sure enough, ten months later the arab spring started in yemen. Not only that, recorded future predicted that that revolution would spread very quickly throughout the middle east. Now, i know that ive talked about an invasion of privacy in terms of your own data, but one of the most important things is to know that even going after publiclyavailable information a Predictive Analytics company was able to predict a revolution that no one else saw coming starting in yemen and spreading into all far all middle east countries. So we dont necessarily have to get into our private information. Because i know that worries everybody. But we can use these predictive models to look at billions of pieces of publiclyavailable data to predict what is going to happen in the future. So i call my book on the edge verge. Excuse me. Im on the edge. On the verge. I call it on the verge because were not quite there yet, but theres no question in my mind well be there soon. So i want to thank you all for being here today, and i want to thank you for starting this discussion. I hope youll get the book. Ill be here to sign books, and i hope that you will help to pass the word that we are on the verge, the First Society that may know future outcomes before they manifest. And that imbues us with a tremendous moral and ethical obligation to act on that information. Thank you so much. [applause] heres a look at some books being published this week. An interdisciplinary scientist at microsoft looks at the advancements in technology during his lifetime. In the sent cent machine, how humanity can survive the rise of artificial intelligence. Also being published this week, Jake Bernstein reports on the financial records contained within the Panama Papers in secrecy world. And Fordham University professor Stephen Stoll provides a history of the appalachia region. Watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Tim, the book is called revolving door lobbying public service, private influence and the unequal representation of interests. Tell me a little about the book. Well, in this book we look at a problem that we have long know has existed. Revolving door lobbying, the first of a phenomenon where people worked inside government and then go back out and end up representing clients and then going back through the door to lobby on behalf of those clients and their interests. But i like to think of it as were the first one to systematically look. So what we did was we got a random sample of names of lobbyists [inaudible] and we had students for about two years [inaudible] and by doing that we essentially reconstructed their resumes in a large databank. So we could look at where lobbyist, where they worked before, who they worked for which gave us the opportunity to try to connect the dots of did they work in congress, the white house, federal agencies, and to they represent interests now that are being regulated by [inaudible] so where did most of them come from . About half of them came from the government. So, but there was a time this is all changing. Back in the 70s and the 80s when we had some data on who lobbyists were in the early days, most lobbyists by far came from their own industries. They were service managers, lawyers who would come up through the ranks and end up just doing lobbying on behalf of their industry or their corporation or even [inaudible] now its about one in two lobbyists used to work in government. And we find some differences between them, not surprisingly. The lobbyists that come up in their own industries tend to be narrowly focused on issues in which theyre really expert. And we kind of think of those as [inaudible] their background and their professionalization. Whereas the hobbyists that come from government they represent everything under the sun. They represent [inaudible] across industry, they are engaged on a wide variety of [inaudible] theyre not actually policy experts, but they are experts at getting foot in the door and explaining to their client if they cant get them in the door, which is pretty common these days in congress, that whats happening behind [inaudible] so in a world today where you have highly polarized congress, they end up essentially writing the bills behind closed doors as opposed to the open Committee Rooms of yesteryear. These lobbyists have become really valuable to simply explain to their clients about what to expect. Their job is to try to reduce Political Uncertainty that we all feel. But as it turns out, the wealthiest [inaudible] really the only ones who are able to afford that critical intelligence that [inaudible] how much money is spent a year on lobbying, would you say . Well, we can say for certainty about 3. 2, 3. 3 billion is spent on lobbying that we know of. So we can get these numbers because congress requires lobbyists to report their spending. But in related work, we have my coauthor and i, weve also found that theres about one lobbyist who does not report their lobbying for every other one who doesnt. So we say its probably closer no 6. 4 billion. And its probably growing because a lot of lobbyists in town are learning that they can do their job and they can recruit their clients and earn money and not trigger the highly, really strict law that requires them to disclose their money. So chances are the numbers probably 7, 8, 9 billion. We dont really know. So what is your background . Im a political scientist. So i Study Congress and i study interesting policy. But before i went to graduate school, i worked on the hill. So i guess i decided not to become a revolving door lobbyist and make a lot less money writing a book. And while you were doing your research for this book, is there anything, any particular industry that you were surprised that had a lobbyist . No. Because ive been studying lobbying and interesting politics long enough to know that every issue, every industry, every subindustry within that industry, they all have lobbyists here in town. But really the story which were telling here is there was once a time when there was lobbyists for every issue and every industry they knew how those widgets were being made. Now, the lobbyists that represent them know how the sausage is being made in congress. They dont know anything about the widgets. Do you think that there will ever be a situation where lobbying will no longer exist . No. Nor do we want that. The First Amendment gives all of us the opportunity to speak truth to power. And largely thats what lobbyists are doing. What the real problem is, is that some kind of speaking truth to power is a little bit more expensive than other kinds of speaking truth to power. And so what we see in [inaudible] is that the wealthy and the best organized and the largest corporations, theyre the ones with the, essentially, the best coverage here in washington. The problem is we dont want to get rid of that just like we wouldnt want to get rid of journalists, just like we wouldnt want to get rid of any of our free speech [inaudible] its a real conundrum then to try to think about how do we give the least of us then as much voice as the wealthy. So what would you like people to take away from reading this book . One, i think the story that i just told. One, that lobbying itself is not bad. Often the story we hear from journalists and the story we hear from commentators and even politicians themselves that we want to drain the swamp. And thats not often true. What that usually means is they want to drain the swamp of those that they disagree with. And so i think one of the takeaways here is that lobbying itself is not the enemy, but really what is the underlying cause [inaudible] revolving door lobbying is that congress itself has effectively lobotomized itself. They no longer hire high quality staff that stay for long periods of time. Now what we see is people spend on Congressional Staff and working at the white house and federal agencies just long must have for them to be able to go out and make some money. So i think the takeaway here might be to try the bring back that public spirit of really actually wanting to serve for the greater good and working in government for that as an end in itself, in the necessarily a steppingstone to the next one