(Live Archive) NBC's Jacob Ward: How Technology Shapes Our Thinking and Decisions

join us this new year for new  conversations at the commonwealth club hello and good evening my name is dj patel  and i'm pleased to be today's moderator   for today's session at the commonwealth  club program focused on jake ward's new book   the loop how technology is creating a  world without choices and how to fight back   this program somewhat ironically unfortunately  due to covid and omicron is virtual but   at least we're able to do it through all this  technology and that's going to be one of the   things we're going to get into but here at  the commonwealth club where i serve on the   board of governors they're actually we're  starting luckily to be able to get some   in-person programming and it is fantastic our  in-person events are picking up in the months   to come and i encourage you to learn more by going  to the club's website at www.commonwealthclub.org and following them on twitter at cw club i'm  pleased to welcome jake back to the commonwealth   club of california to discuss his new book the  focus of the book on how technology artificial   intelligence are working to limit the choices  we make as humans is a subject that's really   critically important to me personally but to begin  with let's just say some quick housekeeping items   um if you have a question to ask jake or me but  really should just ask jake put it in the zoom   chat of course you can always follow along with  jake on on social media um on his twitter handle   uh by jacob ward did i get that right jake  you got it yep awesome or you can follow me   at dpotel um but today we're going to be here  on the zoom on the zoom channel so maybe to   start jake because there is so much to get into  and first i i just want to say congratulations   on on getting this book and for those of you it's  it's available on all the usual places i strongly   encourage you to get it especially given that  the the conversations that are timely at hand   but maybe to start jake i remember how you and  i first met which was actually at a session   that i'd been trying to wrangle people to talk  about ethics and i remember the insightful just   great questions that you were asking and now  i read the book and there's so many dimensions   that i hadn't even thought about that you've been  able to bring together and so congratulations   on doing so much and maybe just to start is  you're a technology correspondent you cover   everything why this subject of all the things that  are the you know of this of the matter of today   well i really appreciate it first of  all dj thank you so much for doing this   when they told me that you and i were going to be  in conversation together i was like oh no he's so   smart about this stuff and i remember being such  a [ __ ] when i first talked to him about it oh   god he's going to blow me out of the water so i'm  really flattered that you are uh here and taking   such personal interest in this um and i remember  very well uh you and i first meeting and talking   about this stuff and and um and that was at a time  when i was having a couple of parallel experiences   and they really set off the book so one was um  i had just done a documentary series for pbs uh   called hacking your mind and through that we went  around the world and met all of these scientists   who were studying human behavior studying the  patterns in the unconscious decisions we make   and one of the big findings of the last 50 years  and this is best popularized through the work of   daniel kahneman who wrote thinking fast and  slow which i know you know about you know is   this idea that we have these two brains these  two cognitive categories essentially one is a   a fast thinking brain an instinctive snake  stranger and fire detection system it grabs   calories off trees without us thinking about it  and gets us out of a burning building you know   without having to coordinate our movements right  it is an incredibly useful thing that's kept us   alive for millions of years they think it's  about 30 million years old then there's your   slow thinking brain your slow thinking brain is a  very new development in the history of our species   it's probably only something like seventy thousand  maybe a hundred thousand years old and it is what   got us thinking what else is there beyond calories  and snakes and strangers in this fire and got us   on our feet and exploring the world and out of  that has come all kinds of stuff art and law   and politics right all of these invented human  systems that are part of our higher society so   all of that is in this pbs series and i got to  then go meet all of these people talking about   this and one of the big findings is that the  vast majority of our decisions are being made   by our instinctive fast thinking brain even  the decisions that we think we are using our   higher cognitive functions to to accomplish at  the same time i was meeting folks like you who   were turning me on to this world of data science  and pattern recognition algorithms and while   i wish to god and this will be one of our themes  tonight that there were lots and lots and lots   of people like you who had been you know trained  in this stuff and then deployed it for good right   as the chief us data scientist unfortunately  i was meeting lots and lots and lots of people   who did not have that goal they were  instead about making money using   pattern recognition systems and i had a  very transformative evening in which i   sat in a uh basically i i went to a dinner party  of a bunch of entrepreneurs they were young   app makers and it was pizza you know i think it  was indian food and beer and a very chill kind   of atmosphere and most of these folks were trying  to deploy this stuff in the service of some really   nice things there was some money saving apps  there was some exercise apps you know stuff sort   of for that but one of the things that they had  come together over was a lot of them used to be   real scientists in some form or another and  they were really interested in learning the   latest behavioral science and trying to bring it  into their work so we were sitting there and we   had this presentation that night and i you know  i went through all the process of saying listen   i'm a journalist anything you say tonight is  going to maybe end up in a book you know careful   nonetheless i got to witness this incredible  thing so these two addiction experts these phds   come up in front of us and describe their findings  around addiction and the habituation of uh   compulsive action and they for instance described  a study that they were really interested by in   which if you took people who had been addicted  to cocaine and used to do it in nightclubs   and you then and they had since gotten sober and  you bring them back to a nightclub you thump the   music in their ears and you flash the lights out  on that of the nightclub and then you show them   a mirror with baking soda on it and you say this  is baking soda and you make sure they understand   that and then you ask them on a scale of 1 to  10 how much would you like to do this baking   soda i don't remember exactly the methodology but  something like that people absolutely want to do   a line of baking soda anyway and the reason they  were telling us that story is because they said   once the habit is built into the brain it's just  there and the human brain it forms these habits so   thoroughly and it's so you know and and can be  so compulsive and the moral of the story was it's   fantastic news for you in your business and that's  why we are here tonight offering you and and   anyone you know our services as addiction experts  and and at one point they were asked well is there   any kind of company you wouldn't work for and they  said and i quote i'm quoting here we don't want   to be the thought police of the internet they  were absolutely agnostic about what they were   going to do with this and they said that a lot  of their colleagues from the program that they   had studied in were now working for the big casino  companies so i'm having this experience of meeting   you know of learning about the patterns  of human behavior learning about the raw   systems that we have developed these you know very  powerful pattern recognition systems and then i   was finding this weird in-between world in which  very qualified behavioral scientists were looking   at the patterns of human behavior and the patterns  in our circuitry and trying to make businesses   out of them and i realized oh geez i think i  gotta write a book or do something with this   and so that's why i got into it it's i mean it's  amazing the the book i mean it starts with this   you know really it's just a mind trip because  you start by talking about time scales and and   what time is really like and if we think about it  how short of an existence we actually have as you   pointed out with our you know our fighter  flights versus our higher order functions   and and how much technology is changing uh and  this this first loop i think is is really as   you're describing it this this the systems  i'm wondering if you could go into a little   bit of that because you go this is almost like i  want to describe it almost as like oliver sacks   meets wired ooh i like that right it is like  if you could write that and get that published   in some place there i can then put it on the  cover of the book that would be really excellent   thank you so much it's like it is this is like  unvarnished view of like wait am i in control and   maybe could you talk a little bit about like what  your favorite sort of unnerving finding about who   we are as humans to could you go into that yeah  sure so so uh the the the concept of the loop   for me is like you say actually three loops in the  book and you know everyone wants to beat up their   own work after they've read it and so i'm not sure  if i did it again i'm not sure i would i think   i'd do a better job of articulating these three  loops but here's how here's how i i came down to   it was there is basically a loop in the middle  which is the loop of our unconscious decision   making again this system one fast thinking brain  versus system two slow thinking brain kind of   cognition right that is the central loop  then there are there's a there's a modern   construction and this is the second loop which is  this sort of manipulative set of business models   and mechanisms that we have deployed to take  advantage of that first loop and these are   things like cigarettes you know it is stuff that  plays on our uh you know at gambling is another   one that plays on out on that circuitry to make  money now the third loop for me is what's going to   be made possible by artificial intelligence and  when i'm talking about artificial intelligence   here i'm not you know i'm talking just about  pattern recognition systems and the ways in which   we're gonna start essentially behaving in response  to manipulation and analysis by businesses already   we can feel it right i'm i can't find my way  from place to place anymore without google maps   i'm totally beholden to google maps and that's  starting to change the way i drive the way i   navigate the way i make plans with people and as  that movement pattern is analyzed by businesses   this third loop is taking form in which pretty  soon i'm not going to know how to do anything   except follow google maps around um you know i  was talking to a friend of mine the other day   who's trying to become a pilot and he was saying  that they still insist at the faa that you learn   the manual system on the flight computer  of how to calculate where you're going   and all the young pilots like why would i do  that i just want to follow the blue line i   don't need to know how to do that right we are  losing a set of uh choices and and abilities   that i think we used to have now well i  think one of the examples is if you google   um you know gps and cliff it's shocking how many  people ignore their their higher level thinking   functions because the car said turn right and you  drove off a cliff that's right so here's here's   an example of one that i think is the bigger  picture that we're looking at here which is so   you'll remember there was a incident in 2017 in  which um uh a flight out of chicago was overbooked   as so many are and a doctor on board refused to  give up his seat and was beaten up by chicago   aviation police and it made the news and the  united ceo had to apologize and these days they   are paying a lot more money to people when their  flight is overbooked i'll tell you that right now   at the time somebody said to me they asked this  question that i then went on to investigate which   is why why did they choose the people they did  and how did that decision get made in the process   and it turned out to be this parable for what  i was talking about which is it turned out   that the computer basically they tried to get  everybody to volunteer to get off the flight   and people would not because the last flight  out of chicago nobody wanted to give up their   seats that was that so they offered a certain  amount of money nobody said yes second round   of bidding nobody said yes finally they said  okay then we're going to choose names at random   and those people will have to get off they  choose these four names and three of those   people dutifully get off the flight this guy  dr david dow he's a pulmonologist he says i   can't get off the flight i've got rounds in the  morning i've got patients to see he was right in   the end you can't you're actually not supposed  to take off a doctor who's on call the next day   but something about and there's a whole  parallel i talked to i talked about all   of these in the book i talked about all these  different experts who could if they were sitting   on the plane could have said careful everybody  this is the moment where you will all abandon   your critical faculties because they will have  told you a system has chosen people at random   and right there anthropomorphism kicks in the  technical term for attributing more sophistication   to a system than it actually possesses simply  because you don't understand how it works   and and everybody in the chain of command down to  the aviation police are just told this guy's name   was chosen by the computer get him off right  and i went and looked at like how do they choo   choose the people oh it's because of do they  have status on the flight and rallies and do   they buy the ticket and well it was all stuff but  nobody was talking about that all they said was   computer says get him off get him out of here and  everybody abandoned their critical faculties until   the aviation police you know they beat this guy up  he had to be hospitalized you know and for me i'm   just seeing over and over again the ways in which  our brains are uniquely vulnerable to being given   a verdict by a system we don't understand and how  desperate we are as the gate agent that night was   not to have to make the hard decision does not  want to be the person to stand there and say i'm   sorry sir you are getting off or i'm sorry you  are getting off instead says computer's going   to choose for us and we're going to see that in  hiring we're going to see that in loan making   we're going to see that who gets bail and i don't  think in the same way that you and i can agree we   don't know how to find our way around anymore  right and people are driving right off a cliff   using their gps i think when the computer says  hire these people you know these people are kiting   you know are committing fraud whatever verdicts  we ask ai to render for us it doesn't matter if   it's right or not we're gonna believe it because  that's what our brains do and we i think nobody   is has has taken that adequately into account and  regulators certainly are not thinking about it yet   and i think we have to rethink how we consider  our vulnerabilities to these systems before we   start deploying them on generations of people  as we're about to it's interesting because   that example in the book you also come to the  defense of the of of the aviation flight police   i think that's what they're called so that's  right they in fact they so one of the officers   sued the um uh the chicago airport authority i  can't remember what it's called but the aviation   the civil aviation authority whatever it is  in chicago and he at the time was made fun of   by like local newscasts you know another spurious  lawsuit you know of course he's trying to you   know hand off responsibility for this but in his  lawsuit when you read it it's so interesting what   he says is we were not adequately trained to know  what to do when we are told to get a non-compliant   passenger off a flight who's been chosen at  random and so you know i don't i don't think   i don't think he was reading you know uh the  cognitive people that i you know was reading   i don't think we came at it for the same reason  but his instinct was the same as mine which is   wait a minute i didn't have the faculties or the  leverage or the anything he just understood that   like the system had everybody in its grip and  and terrible decisions were made as a result   uh you know and for me i i do i have sympathy  for him not least because i think we're going to   see over and over again and all these agencies  right let's think about um you know i was just   talking to somebody the other day at nbc news he  was talking about the difficulty of hiring um uh   this was somebody worked in an industry in which  you know they would love to be able to hire people   that the ai doesn't think is qualified and they  can't even they don't even have enough people on   staff in the hr department to go in nobody's got  time to go in and say wait you know this person   actually is really cool in all these other ways if  they're if the if the check boxes are not checked   then you know by the the pattern recognition  system you know then that person's out of the   running and so i am i'm i'm deeply sympathetic  to anybody these days who says wait a minute why   are we doing it this way and shouldn't we think  about a different way to do it because i think the   profit motive and the incentive structure is going  to make it harder and harder for us to do it if we   don't stop you know if we don't slow this process  down now and we see i think in policing too   is is if an officer questions decision they're  fired also because of some form of insubordination   and so it's almost like you're damned if you do  damned if you don't and you can you can get the   human gets fired but there's no accountability  is one of the things i've taken away from   you know the loop structure that the way you've  you've articulated it well i appreciate that and   i think i think you're absolutely right i just  think you know there's very little incentive to   push back against this stuff now i i want to say  here you know i mean i want to be i i am trying to   push back against this whole thing because i think  it's really scary i also think that there are in   fact some really extraordinarily positive uses of  some of this technology and and and some of it can   i think be great so there's a very fascinating guy  named michael knapp who runs a place called green   river ai um he's way out in the woods in vermont  uh working by himself and and he has a team there   but you know he's just he's off the beaten  path and he he only works with non-profits and   um some he'll do some hospital and health work  but he has these very high standards for himself   about who he will deploy ai on and with and i was  running my thesis by him you know that we're going   to lose human agency over time if we rely on these  systems he said man i wish i had that problem   you know he's like my people aren't moving fast  enough on this stuff if i if only they would   grab on to ai the way that for-profit companies  had he said for instance if you gave me every   birth certificate in the country and i could  just feed it through a machine learning system   um you know a gan would kick back at me every  apartment that needs to be repainted to avoid   lead poisoning in this company in this country i  could save millions of years of life if you if you   gave me that opportunity but i'm not allowed to do  that or he said in social services agencies they   a person comes in and applies for help and then  we find the services for that person he said   it should be the opposite ai should look at the  available resources and feed them to individual   cases go out and find individual cases but we're  not allowed to do it that way you're not allowed   to to approach somebody that way so the problem  i think is that nobody's making money taking lead   out of apartments nobody's making money  matching social services people with the   unhoused uh we are making money on gambling  right we're making money on addiction and   i think ai has an incredible capacity to in theory  amplify our slow thinking brain our sophisticated   moral brain right this is the the thesis  in fact a new book by daniel kahneman   i was so disappointed by that book because i  wanted to say to him yeah but nobody's making   money doing that they don't want to sell to system  2 to the fast thing into the slow thinking brain   they want to sell to the fast thinking brain  they want to sell to your instinctive systems   that can't help but you know get angry and make a  rash decision on the rest of it so huh to me it's   capitalism that i worry about here well it's a  great one because i think you know what we've seen   in the early days of data science is the potential  power of of of using data for for frankly good uh   you know the one that i think about is you  know given this recent fire in new york city   you know one of the early cases in the  bloomberg administration was how they   were cleverly using data to identify  which buildings were likely to have   lots of problems because of complaints and calls  to you know the the city and they just it wasn't   like they did machine learning there they just  took a list and they said who's got the most   complaints and let's look at the the places  nearby and so they could prioritize the the   police inspector or the the fire inspector's  time to be most efficient and effective it almost seems like government   is not and i also think about like medical errors  in hospitals like is is it purely economics is it   because like i think about all these do-gooders  who want to go into these fields what's   holding them back from from taking giving agency  to to um forces of good for lack of a better   return right right and i i do think i think it's  money i mean i just think it's money it is uh it   is much much harder and less profitable to do what  you were describing and i and i that is not to   say that people aren't going to to be able to do  that kind of stuff you know like there's fantastic   you know i i i meet people every so often who  against all capitalist instincts have decided   you know i'm going to make a business that does x  you know i'm going to work my brains out to do a   you know i met a kid the other day who um wanted  to subvert the cash bail system by creating a   whole alternative sort of you know i mean and  and it was a it's a you know it could be a   huge money maker but his whole purpose was to try  and do away with cash bail because it is a deeply   unethical and uh unequal system and falls most  heavily on the poor and all of this stuff right   but those people are very few and far  between and i think that that you know i also   you know i i one of the difficulties and  i know that you have encountered i assume   you have encountered this too and i and i wonder  i'd love to hear your thoughts about as well is   you know there is a tremendous culture  in silicon valley and in technology   in general of convincing the people that work in  that industry that the work they are doing is for   the better is for the you know a greater good it  doesn't really matter what they're doing making   chairs making vape pens the line from the the  you know hr people who tend to be referred to   now as people and culture kind of people right is  is you're doing good works in this world and so i   think a lot of people actually spend a huge amount  of their time being convinced of that also you   know some of the biggest companies they refer to  uh you know the people in that line of work as as   scientists and as you know the the the core you  know they don't call to the headquarters anymore   they call the campus right there's a there's  an academic veneer to how some of this is is   done that i think draws people in it makes it  very difficult for me as a journalist to have a   frank conversation with them and that's putting  aside the fact that this is the most secretive   companies in the world that you know when i talk  to my colleagues at nbc who cover the military   you know or cover the pentagon right they they  people will talk to them endlessly not necessarily   on the record but they will talk to them endlessly  it is incredibly difficult for someone as a   journalist to to speak to people inside one of  these companies and by the way anyone listening   who would like to speak with me i'm very good at  keeping a secret i would love to speak with you   but you know what i'm saying like like so i  think there are many many incentive structures   built here that are going to make that  that make it difficult for people to   make good choices and i would also like to point  out smart very you know much smarter people than   me people like you you know there's a guy a um a  brilliant uh uh woman named meredith whitaker who   was inside google she's now a consultant  to the ftc she's working with lena kahn   and she made you know she was one of the very  first people to say it is not okay i mean thinking   here about what you're saying about like trying  to push back trying to raise your hand say this   is this is a you know not okay that it is not okay  inside inside certain companies for someone in the   position of being a data scientist to even ask  what their work is going to be used for you know   i was talking to somebody the other day uh at one  of the big five tech companies four six whatever   there are now uh who said um that if you ask too  many times you immediately get fired that it's a   it's a if you ask you know what is this going  to be used for too many times they let you go   you know so i think it's a really complicated  landscape in which to create any kind of   groundswell of resistance to this kind of stuff  um and i i worry about that right yeah so so for   those that are just kind of joining us we're in  conversation with uh jacob ward and his book uh   new book uh the loop and we're gonna start taking  questions in a bit so um i can encourage you in   the zoom chat to ask them here and you should  definitely be following jake on twitter and other   social media uh at by jacob ward by jacob ward uh  you know let the the one that you're talking about   in these corporations and transparency i think  is a great jumping off point because uh jumping   into point uh around national security and you  know some of these companies are talking about   you know the need and the desire to work on on  national securities given the complex landscapes   questions about western values and what's being  put into these systems china is aggressively   going after surveillance technologies we've seen  ai being used to break into systems from israeli   companies it's a very complex landscape and if  we the our classic argument is if we don't do it   somebody else will that's right how how how do  you square all these things as you look across   across the complexity of the world and honestly  preserving our lifestyles i know i know it is such   a vast and important subject and maybe that's  the next book right but but i think that the   so first of all that thing of if i don't  do it someone else will is one of the great   traps of this world whether you are someone who  you know i've i've had people say that to me who   work in national security related products  making surveillance systems uh you know i've   and i've heard that from people literally who  make uh you know uh highly addictive casino   simulators uh designed to ensnare old ladies  uh you know that way of thinking that someone's   gotta do it it might as well be me i can do it  a little more ethically than somebody else will   is is a real complicated thing and  that's common thing now national security so you're actually it's amazing  that we have to start with the side   oh my god i mean it's so complicated right  like right before the pandemic i was in this   i was just about to go to china to try to  do a whole series for nbc about this because   it's and and one of the conversations that we were  having about it is the language that you have to   use in order to speak to chinese officials about  this stuff and what i wanted to do essentially was   go there and say okay you have the exact same  technological capabilities arguably even more   sophisticated technological capabilities and an  entirely opposite world view political worldview   and and what does what would our lives look like  if we were living in an authoritarian environment   in which um stability and control was the priority  as it is in china and it's so fascinating to   to talk about that then with people here in  the libertarian west uh you know west coast   i was at a dinner where someone was giving  a presentation on the chinese social credit   system where you have to register your you  know look at by jacob board you got to turn   that to those credentials into the government  so they can monitor what you do online and if   you don't behave properly if you post something  about 10 square or worse if one of your friends   posts something about tinny square your credit  score goes down and you can't get a loan and   eventually you can't ride trains and eventually  you're basically a prison a prisoner in your house   you know they were describing that system and  the effect it's having on social cohesion and   this that and the other and after the presentation  the room was divided half of people said uh wow   that's a nightmare and the other half people  said we should totally have that here in the   united states you know there is an there is a  way in which the most textbook form of communism   you know and where and authoritarianism and  where it goes and the most wild uh form of of   libertarian tech fused capitalism meet in the  distance in this weird way that i haven't really   figured out for myself yet but i do know  that over and over again i i bump into people   you know who who essentially say we have  always assumed in the united states that   our model is the model and and you know there's  that phrase theodore parker originated it but   martin luther king said it right the the more  like the universe is alone but it bends toward   justice obama's say it a lot you spend some time  with behavioral scientists political scientists   people actually study this stuff and they'll say  no we don't know that to be true the moral arc   of of the universe is so long and we've been on  it only very briefly we don't know which way it   bends we don't even know if it's an arc you know  they are not optimistic about this stuff it is   all an experiment and so i do not think it is  in any way a foregone conclusion that our way   of life and how we deploy technology and the sorts  of conversations that you and i are having tonight   are a natural thing you know that's going to  take place all around the world you know it   could very easily go the other way so you  know i don't know all i know is that yeah   that is such a minefield i'm it's so complicated  to think about and i i i wish i was asking you   the questions about it because i don't know  the answers to that one well that's why i get   to ask the questions because we're all trying  to figure it out right but at the same time   you know some of the stuff that i struggle  with honestly here is you know i i think   like let's just take a look at the google maven  project the one you referred to before which is   also this one of surveillance and on one side in  the surveillance systems you have a human who's   sitting in the screen who's trying to track a  person and if they get distracted because somebody   asked somebody and now they're following the wrong  person that may result in somebody deploying you   know i don't know in a drone or something  that that takes out somebody who's innocent   and so could the computer is a computer there also  to fire us out of jobs that we find so boring that   we are bad at them and results in an error i'm  thinking about the nurse who mistypes the diabetes   the insulin number or fat fingers it just because  she's so tired because she's working taking care   of 50 coveted patients and and now this person  is getting the wrong thing yeah yeah i you know   for me i think all things being equal you know  i was talking to an organizational psychologist   who was basically saying yeah if you you know i  was asking are you in favor of using automated   systems to find candidates for jobs and screen  them and the rest of it and she said you know   if it replaces the racist instincts of some you  know uh long-standing hiring manager who's been   bringing his racism to it for years yes absolutely  unfortunately i she was saying i don't think that   you know the it is it is as simple as swapping the  judgment of one out for the judgment of the other   because along with this is this blindness to all  of these different things and this is me talking   now i mean you know the unique human vulnerability  to believing systems we do not understand right   there and uh there was a recent study of all of  these um high-level ctos uh at these some of the   biggest companies in the world and they were asked  um you know how often are you used relying on ai   to make important decisions and they were like  all you know all the tests like 75 or something   crazy and then they said you know how many of  you can actually explain how the systems work   almost nobody has any idea how these systems  are arriving at the decisions they are and to   what extent are you worried about that not even  slightly you know like less than a quarter of   these guys and it's mostly guys of course uh you  know care so it's the the problem i think is that   in the case of the exhausted nurse who's  going to be replaced by the system excellent   that would be great if the pattern of history  were that we then gave more time to that nurse   to do her job better to do his job better that's  not how we tend to use this stuff we cut that   nursing staff down to two right and then we use  those automated systems so we i think we have to   build some values and emotions into how we make  these decisions as opposed to just doing them   for efficiency and better accuracy because  you know it is it is going to be necessary   and i will say sort of take it more time here  but just you know i will say there have been   some instances in which we have done that as a  country so for instance you know uh backup cameras   um there's a physician who accidentally uh  backed over his child's most terrible story   and he gave all of this congressional testimony  about it and eventually after a long battle   it is now the case that if you buy a new  car in the united states you have to the   car has to have a backup camera and you're  paying about 1200 more per vehicle for this   and that is because about 60 kids a year were  being run over typically by their parents   the efficiency model and the you know the math  would suggest well that's not very many kids   but we as a country can agree that that is totally  unacceptable and that we can agree that we can out   we should solve that problem and send the senators  could for whatever reason they got together it was   a bipartisan effort they made it happen and today  that doesn't you know those numbers have dropped   to almost nothing so we can make decisions on the  basis of things other than efficiency and we're   really going to have to because the temptation  to just do it because it saves you a few nurses   is going to be the thing that drives the  value proposition for so long and we need   to stop thinking about it that way i think it's  it's so it's so good it brings up two sort of   memories of mine one is the uh president obama's  precision medicine initiative and the argument   that i think really got the president president  obama over the line on it and realizing why he   wanted a data scientist to really run this was the  only way we're going to go after long these long   term genetic issues that sort of cropped up in the  in the that we call n of one these rare diseases   is if we make this a data problem and we're able  to kind of instead of just having hypotheses out   there and going and building these very complex  tests kind of going wait isn't that interesting   we're seeing this correlation here of cancers uh  um a population just having cancer we should go   study that you know this other one that comes  to mind is early in my career uh with national   security was i was talking to this general we  were building these detectors after 9 11 to   to you know basically tell if somebody was  bringing in something that had a like a dirty bomb   and you know we had all this pretty sophisticated  stuff and and graphs and charts and everything   and the general pulled me aside said son you ever  work with a marine i was like no sir he said the   light is either red yeah right or a green yeah he  just turned and walked away now my apologies to my   my marine friends but but it raises this other  point that you're talking about and so i want   to use this as a jumping off point because we're  getting a number of really great questions here   uh and taking those two examples back to the  issue of racism and the racial reckoning we   have because we got a couple dimensions there  that i'd love your take on one side we have some   communities that are saying yeah put license plate  readers all up my over my neighborhood because   we want to do i have to hide we might have to  hide but there's there's clear bias and bending   that that moral arc there we have people using  facial recognition in fair protests we also have   the ai systems that are who designs these but also  has commented in one of these com somebody pointed   out here is thank you so much for speaking on this  issue as a lawyer i noticed that most judges are   irritated when the defense counsel even suggests  that our systematic way of doing these things   should not be challenged and then the judiciary  is starting to use bail calculators as you talked   about that have been proven to be racist so i i  bring up all these things because it's such a wide   area how do you how do you get your head around  this yeah yeah so there are so many dimensions to   it as you as you say and you know and thank you so  much for that question whoever brought that in so   the law is such an interesting one because  it that is i mean there is there is no better   example of that slow sorry as i said slow thinking  brain right the slow thinking brain in which we   are policed by people we've never met and we  try to create these laws we all agree on and   you know i mean our instinctive snake detection  systems were not capable of that and so it is a   credit to our species that we're able to do that  my dad always makes the point you know that when   we when we drive on the highway that we managed  to keep our lane and not kill each other it's   just a miracle and it's absolutely correct so the  fact that in the law we're thinking here about   this is so interesting so there's a a superior  court judge uh named tino cuellar um who is now   running an institute and as a very smart  guy he was at stanford when i was doing a   fellowship there and he said to me you know you  could make the law so much more efficient it   would be possible to do it you know he said for  instance entering a guilty plea is such a pain   you've got to fill out all these forms and you've  got to do this you've got to do that you've got to   you know think it through and we could make it a  swipe left thing you could make it you know such   an easy thing he's like but we have a principle  that we call weak perfection and is the idea   that you build a system intentionally awkward so  that people have to think about it because with a   guilty plea or not guilty plea that's going to  change your life you don't get to take it back   you know it's one of the biggest decisions you'll  ever make and so we cannot make it as simple as   ordering from grubhub we need to keep it hard  we need to do that so that people bring them   their best selves to it so in this particular  question of you know you know judges don't like   having something like systemic inequality brought  up i know i mean i have this whole section of the   book that for me was the really mind-blowing  one for me which was getting into the world of   online casino simulators i've mentioned them a few  times here because they're the big bugaboo for me   these absolutely cynical predatory companies  that that use the circuitry of addiction and   and geo fencing and targeting and you know  distressed lines of credit and all the other   stuff you can find through data to pinpoint people  they think are going to get addicted and what's so   interesting is that for years i was talking to  this one lawyer who for years has been trying to   sue on behalf of these people who lose their life  savings to these companies like 499 at a time and   he was left out of court for years because  the judges would say i'm not calculating   this is you know what are you talking about loss  you know losses these people are suckers you know   and i've had many people in my reporting on this  for nbc also say you know these people are suckers   and they get whatever they deserve because they're  playing a fool's game but recently they've started   winning these lo this law firm has begun winning  they just did a 150 million dollar settlement with   one of these companies because they were able to  show in the data that these companies know exactly   how addicted these people are and are finding them  on that basis and so i think if you can get better   if we can as a society get better at deploying the  same pattern recognition systems that we're using   to ensnare people to instead prove the existence  of systemic racism the way that redlining   and systemic discrimination has made its way  into all these other things right i think we   could get to a place where you could actually make  a case in court you know i know people are very   cynical about the role of of trial attorneys and  litigation and this stuff but that's why we don't   smoke cigarettes anymore you know and i think that  that suing the bejesus out of people is part of   how we're going to get through this and and that  is that's for me i i hold i'm clinging to that one   because i think that's going to be a big part of  this um so please make sure to get your questions   in here in the chat uh this raises another good  one that was on my list of things to talk about   and i'm glad a number of people have brought this  up also which is misinformation where we are as a   country in people going down into conspiracies  and getting sucked into things whether it's   vaccinations or january 6th in the insurrection  and people's head getting turned around what's the role of technology in this and you  know one side of it is people are like you know   we have this culture in america of you know if  you're not tough enough addiction is your fault   and then we have this other side of you know  oh it's not it's not them right yeah yeah yeah   that's right you know so so i i've been so lucky  to be in touch with people who you know to work   alongside and have for this book interview people  who really specialize in this in in in thinking   not just about misinformation which is itself  such a problem but also the grift which is   how i thought to be taught you know is how  i've taught to be thought to think about it   involved in misinformation the small time  grifters who make money off of misinformation   so around january 6th for instance i spent  that day monitoring all of the online streaming   folks typically on youtube who were streaming from  the capitol and they're pulling in the feeds the   live feeds of on people's phones which of course  have gotten so many of those people arrested   um uh and at the top of the youtube screen  if you have a certain number of subscribers   you're allowed to institute what's called a super  chat which allows you to charge money for pinning   somebody's comment to the top of the window for  a few minutes and you can set whatever price you   want youtube of course takes a percentage of that  and it's 20 bucks 50 bucks whatever you know 100   bucks and i just watching people bing bing bing  you know they're making you know a few thousand   bucks a minute now is that a few thousand  bucks a minute live streaming live streams   of the seat of democracy the an insurrection  you can't make this up right you cannot make it   up exactly you would not believe it if you saw  it so it is it is it is uh yeah it's idiocracy   but not funny right it is it is and and and so  that profit incentive is a huge driver of this   when i go cover um you know when i was covering a  lot of the stop the steel protest rallies at nbc i   would go see these people there who are streaming  live and it's so interesting because they look   sort of to a space alien they might look like  their job's the same as mine they've got lights   their hair is done they're doing their makeup  right and then they go live but these people are   leading the chant and when you look at their their  instagram feed or you look at their super chat on   youtube you can see they're making money in that  moment now i am also being paid to cover this   but i don't get paid more per  comment you know what i'm saying like   you have a you have an industry behind you  ideally called journalistic yeah that's right   that's right and i get fired if i make it up if  i lie i get fired so so there's some gargoyles   right but anyway that that for me learning the  grift was really powerful and then there's a   very brilliant woman named nandi gemini who who  runs something called check my ads uh and uh   she was the co-founder of sleeping giants you're  probably familiar with and she has been doing all   of this research about the ways in which online  advertising funds um all of these uh very scary   publishers of all kinds of scary stuff and um she  turned me on to the research that that really sort   of set her on her path which showed that there are  all kinds of blacklist services that will spike   certain published articles against basically  make it such that advertisers won't be you know   who don't want to be publishing or advertising  next to sensitive topics won't be published next   to certain news articles and she discovered that  in fact with the research actually discovered that   it is people covering really important stuff  that are being blacklisted off of these lists   such that some pulitzer prize-winning brilliant  people at the new york times for instance   were not no online advertising was appearing  next to their work so it's actually costing the   new york times money to run that kind of really  important journalism so for me right when i when   i think about misinformation again i'm thinking  okay there is a system here both of pattern dumb   pattern recognition that nobody is equipped to  question and incentive structures that is fueling   this stuff it i you know i also blame as much as  the next person our tendency to just try and be   tribal and crass and get attention the attention  economy is a really important part of all that   stuff but there's some specific machinery in there  that i think we should be starting to think about   how we're going to take a hammer to it i mean  yeah one of the ones i will highlight because   this is how much i enjoyed the book here is  i think it's in chapter two you talk about   this experiments of what happened when  kids are just basically told they're on the   you know green team versus the orange team  and what affiliation does as a powerful   i mean psychological motivator you know and it  gets me to one of these the questions that's in in   here is and almost like the way i almost want to  describe it is is on once you could you talk about   this addiction of people have too much time on  their hands because technology is freeing them up   they can take drugs get into the stupor and  detach from the world same thing happens with   gambling you see a version of that you see a  version of this with uh um as with people who   don't have alternatives to spend their time on  work or other things getting into these forums   where they get they get radicalized not just here  in the united states we see it around the world   and it's almost this version of like we're using  technology to free ourselves up from time but   then you know when time comes together you know  your free time plus despair the note i wrote is   free time plus despair equals opportunity to take  advantage of people and technology accelerates it   yeah it is i'd love for your reaction to that  yeah so i i yeah i i i absolutely i'm various   about what you say i i'm not sure that i  blame free time as much as i blame despair   in in the equation that you have there and i  also think that social isolation is a huge part   of that as well so one of the common threads you  know there in the book there's a 14 year old kid   who lost his mom and was deeply isolated  in uh florida who wound up going down this   rabbit hole uh of of race quote unquote race  realism and all of this stuff and wound up   adhering to all kinds of white supremacists he's  a muslim right and he turned out to be muslim   that's right he was a his parents were bosnian  muslims who escaped genocide and he nonetheless   wound up down this rabbit hole and became you  know somebody who believes in white supremacy so   that kid couldn't have been sadder or  lonelier than than he was he was deeply   looking for connection and was not able to find  it another character who you know fell prey to   online casino uh simulators also a deeply  lonely and and sad person and here's the thing   is i you know what i'm starting to understand is  that there are marketing mechanisms out there that   find people who exhibit those conditions you know  i don't know about you but a lot of my pandemic   as soon as i turned in the book anyway i went  hard at tic-tock for a while and would doom scroll   my way through hours of it until and here's what  happens when you get to a certain point in tik-tok   until a video comes up that says you've been  scrolling really fast you should slow down there's   like a little little warning that says you've been  going too fast slow down and then eventually it'll   say you've been looking at videos for quite a  while you want to take a break meanwhile every   ad i get is for adhd medication right and i'm  sure anyone out there listening to this who's   been on tick tock recently has gotten these  ads as well huge amounts of adhd medication now   maybe everybody's getting that maybe that's just a  blanket kind of advertising campaign i don't think   so i think that inside that company there are  there is a pattern recognition system that says   this guy is exhibiting the classic signs of x y  and z serve him an adhd ad you know it is not just   the affinities that we have and the hobbies we  exhibit and what we post about it is the way we   behave that is showing our inner state and i  think that we are being analyzed in that way   that is the loop right that's what's starting to  grab us um and as they get better at noticing that   i'm adhd i'm not actually a diagnosed adhd people  and there's and there's a whole problem with with   advertising adhd people who have not been  clinically diagnosed but putting all that aside   the qualities they have spotted in me and are  feeding me information as a result i have to   basically the way tik tok is for me it's  like doing drugs i do it for a couple of   months and then i have to erase it off my phone  because i cannot control myself with that app   and so yeah there's an inner state being analyzed  here um that i think is a is a huge part of this   and you know maybe it is extra time on our hands  but i don't know about you like half of americans   can't put together an extra 400 an emergency right  now i don't think time is our problem you know   well i've i've tried to layer in a number of  the questions there's so many more that have   come in that are they're amazing i hope so many  people will uh keep putting them in here the uh   maybe to capture a couple more of these is it's  almost like i might describe these as are you   optimist or a pessimist no i know i'm a weird i  mean it's almost like this what do we do about   this what are we going to do jake i know here's  what we're going to do here's what we're going to   do i think we're going to first of all need to  look deep inside these companies and make them   civilly and maybe even criminally liable for   the ways in which they have tried to manipulate  our behavior i think that it's going to start   costing these companies money right now human  attention is treated as this kind of ephemeral   thing there's it's endless you know um but  you know people smarter than me have been   you know saying no no it is like mining and we  need to regulate it not that we do a great job   of regulating mining but we need to get into to  these companies i think probably through lawsuits   and begin showing what they are what knowing and  doing now that's that's for me the the first step   but i also think there needs to be a  recognition that all of that it's like star wars we're watching you know when i watch  star wars these days and han solo is being told   by c-3po never tell me the odds you know leave  me alone nerd right he's always saying you know   don't tell me you know oh you know captain  solo the chances of survival are 10 56 to   1 right and he says never tell the odds listen  to c-3po c-3po should be the hero of that movie   because he's right should not do this you know and  our whole culture is geared it has been since the   19th century on this idea of rugged individualism  growth at all costs is good we're going out to the   west and and you know uh pioneering our way  out to a better life you know as opposed to   thinking as a community about how are we going to  support one another what if it all goes wrong and   and and for me a big part of that is going to  have to be making it socially acceptable to say   here are my mental predilections so for  me i try i tell anybody who who you know   wants talking about it like i am uh i no longer  drink i'm a uh i don't i think it's unfair to   people who suffer from alcoholism to refer  to myself as a as an alcoholic i'm not sure i   fall fully into that category but i absolutely  cannot drink i've learned that about myself   and i have also learned as a result that when  people say to me hey let's meet up and go to a bar   i say to them no i i would love to take a walk  with you i would love to do this other thing   but i cannot go to a bar with you i used to drink  and i don't anymore and that's going to mess me up   right being able to say tick tock has got me right  being able to say i'm having trouble with this   thing you know making it socially acceptable to  look at the odds right to listen to c-3po i think   is going to be a really important thing and then  the last thing is i think we need to stop letting   culture the modern culture as it's being  dictated by some of the biggest companies   um tell us our norms so for me right now i'm  in the process at the school that i'm that my   children are at of creating a pact with all  the the parents in the grades that we are in   to not give our children personal smartphones  until they enter high school at the very earliest   and i can't tell you how complicated that  conversation is it's a very hard thing to have   that conversation because it involves admitting to  your own difficult relationship with smartphones   the you got to sort of admit as apparently you  don't have any idea what your kid is really   doing with them and what that might be and that  you may not even know your kid fundamentally at   all you know it's a really hard conversation but  we have managed to get through it and in fact   i'm i'm on the hook right now for being  the guy who's supposed to write up the new   revised pledge after a huge amount of really smart  input um it makes my palm sweat to realize that i   am i'm on the hook for that right now but you  know it's going to require communities coming   together and saying nope nope i'm not going to  do that because you know the statistics show   that the vast majority of parents get their cues  about what's an appropriate use of technology   from the ads for technology from a cutesy alexa  ads you know in which the kid and the dog you   know trigger alexa by accident is not adorable  you know they're normalizing behavior that we   have not actually signed off on and i think that  we should we need to start coming up with some   civic structures for saying no it's too and we're  too quick to say oh don&

2022-01-29 22:00

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