of the cold war. the space race was a major initiative within the cold war. the 60 to estrus and came here for navigation training, needed to know the night sky better than anyone. >> june observatory in 1984 that specializes in the photography of the moon. in the personal stories of two women leave their mark on the nation. >> i made nine wonderful over the last two weeks. and without shuttle goes, there's going to be ten souls. thank you. [applause]. >> the movie showed everyone who captain johnson was, what she did, and how profound she was in the pages of american history. history of space exploration is a cspan city tour exports the market sorry.

>> next on book tv, programs from our archives the focus on technology. even watch them in their entirety by visiting our website booktv.org. use the search function at the top of the page. first of march 2019, nyu school of business professor amy webb, artificial intelligence and giving too much power to big corporations. >> my job is to lower risk for a living. i primarily focus on technology. over and over i kept going back to the same nine companies pretty he sang companies, a controlling share patents. that have extraordinary amounts of money. they're able to attract the best talent because they have the best food. they have the relationships with the universities buried and does not mean that there aren't other companies like salesforce or uber that are doing amazing things, but it is these are through the sign companies and everything else flows.

the entire ai ecosystem in some way or another touches the sign. in addition to all of the things, there also building the frameworks in the silicone chips for any the coded basis. all roads lead to the sign companies. and the challenge that i have is that is the case that artificial intelligence is not just being built to create a better microwave. all of that school. but instead to optimize our lives. using data as currency. what is the mean when we relegate that to just a handful of companies in a handful of people working at these companies. who probably don't look like us. they don't have the same worldviews is us. in longer-term, downstream implications of that what does it look like. three of those companies are in china. there the bat. there publicly traded companies

but i have learned in china and japan. anybody watches china news, publicly traded companies are still under the sum of beijing. there is no escape. you can be an incredibly, successful ceo, it is because your in lockstep in some ways with the chinese government. and that's matters because china currently has a brilliant person at the helm. the president is very smart. very effective leader and very good long-term planner. china has a culture of long term planning. you can go back to your history luggage a lot of big strategic initiatives in the five-year plans . see how a lot of the really never amounted to anything. but i think things are different this time. in a different because we have a person in power and leadership team around him to really

understand technology. so you probably heard of the road initiative. so this seems like an infrastructure initiative. building bridges and roads in exchange for that diplomacy all around the world. in the silk road route is wealth is into deep latin american affect. but what most people don't realize is that this is not just about building physical bridges and physical roads. as a digital component as well. fifty-eight countries are part of the digital side of the bri. beginning five g. they're getting china's social credit score system. so the parts of southern china right now where you might be an intersection and nephew j walk, which is illegal there, smart cameras are the intersection will recognize who you are. you face covered. we could be obscured.

these systems are very smart. and they can recognize you might date, posture, i have you are walking. so if you've caused an infraction, your face is thrown upon a digital billboard rated at that intersection ride-a-long with your name, and where you work. that information is transmitted to your employers. and to your family members and if you have done it more than once, you might be told to report to a local police precinct. and you are demoted. so your total score the chinese citizen, is taken down a few notches. there are opportunities to earn points if you have done something good. somebody can report working you might get a few points up. this is a program is intended to be national but has not yet rolled out nationally. you may saying to yourself, that is china. i don't live there. so it is very interesting but you know, who cares.

let me tell you why this matters to you. first of all, this system already prevented 17.5 million people from buying plane tickets. more than 70 million people last year cannot fly. five and half million people esther could not buy a train ticket. 300,000 people who did really great jobs at work, their scores were too low and as a result, they were just disqualified from ascending to management positions. these are not just ethnic minorities who are being discriminated against pretty this is a shot at huge social controls. and you may be saying to yourself again, this and you had been talking microwaves. i don't know why all of this necessarily matters to me. and the reason that the matters, if it's a case that china is aligning itself with all of these countries around the world. many of which are economically

vulnerable. there vulnerable for any other number of reasons. because of climate change, because they have political unrest. and they are inching towards an authoritarian leader. the social credit score system, is an option for this place pretty helps keep the populace in control. china has also already exporting this to different places pretty when this matters is because while we are on future wars and building big ships bombs and thinking about missiles in the sky, but we have forgotten to look at is what happens of china rages an economic war. and it effectively in front effectively blocks is out of places and forces us to come to terms with think that we don't like or understand. this potentially prevents us from doing business and traveling. it potentially reshapes the world and a sort of new world order with china is not just a militaristic and economic facing front thread.

as a formidable global threat. that is china. in the united states, there's an antagonistic relationship. a transactional relationship but antagonistic relationship, between the valley in dc. so what winds up happening is there's a lack of understanding, there are not enough of a nation ship spring valley sort of does what it wants. until somebody gets upset and than they apologize and than they do the same thing again. over and over and over again. until monday, and you have somebody like elisabeth warren, who starts demanding that they are broken up. you can't break up these companies. there are many reasons why some of them have to do with strategy. some have to do with nuts and bolts of technology. but this is the light bill. remember when the bell company got broken up into baby bells. this is not that rated is not telephoning. these companies have multiple

divisions and their intertwined in their very complicated. at the united states is going to continue to fund it science. continue to defend our education systems. in technology, and was going to build out the future of ai among other parts of science and everything else pretty you can't just break these apart. it does not work that way. and in the process of arguing back and forth. these companies are competing against each other rather than collaborating. this is us a 4-inch branch, little by little, your daily permissions being taken away. i no longer have the ability to back my car up into the garage with my radio full volume. it is because somebody in the small ai tribe decided they were going to optimize my filthiest life.

i was probably unsafe like you are. even though we have never been in a car accident. i no longer have control over the volume of my car. it seems insignificant. there's a compounding effect over time rated and we are all apart now of this process that is unfolding in slow motion. you are the analogy of the frog in the pop and the water slowly over time, boiling a don't realize it until the frog is dead. i don't want to be the doug frog in the pot. and i realize that sounds like hyperbole. there are so many things that we turn a blind eye to it at some point there is no way to turn back. there's no switch. there's no single switch for ai forcing a was in charge. and no national leadership on this issue. president trump issued a in a signed an executive order. with that executive order on artificial intelligence is not self executing. we do not have budgets, or singular department in charge.

we do not have institutional knowledge, spread throughout our federal government. we have smart people but now the right places. and in the valley, we have incredibly smart people do thanks want to do good by and for society but who are not instead, constantly dealing with market demands. let me be clear on this. i don't think the big nine companies and certainly would are part of the big nine, i don't think they're able. i don't think that you intend to do harm. i think we've gotten ourselves into a situation with the system is broken. >> with open of archives to at recent author programs about technology. recalls her experiences working for tech startups. >> san francisco, 24 when i joined the company. i was 25 years old. obviously worldly experience he prayed the fact tha i think it's

incredibly hard to run a company full of adults mainly who have dependents or debts or whatever. i do not envy anyone in that position. i have a lot of something for someone who is learning to be a ceo and i think that reason, one of them is that i feel that the behavior that i saw institutionally as well as individually, was more result of the start of the structural condition individual failure. in her lies that was sort of a narrative. or framework but. host: governing the companies and people.

>> to be coy, or to be or a puzzle for people to solve. inaudible. >> more than i wanted to gesture towards a sort of a common leadership style or has more to do with the incentives of the business model than of the industry. and let me illustrate this. i feel like i'm walking onto these readings with my own book. it's like my american girl doll. [laughter]. i'm here with my book. [laughter]. i think it was in new york.

anna: they had read my book in the mentioned scene in which a talk about how early members of my team were wearing a costume of my manager asked who the five smartest people that you know write the names down. i will do this. and then look at it was too. why don't they work here. inaudible. >> why would they were here. this doesn't make sense. and so many other useful things to do. why would, like my friends who are in graduate school, they probably would make their way to the tech moment. but what with these people who are smart and talented and interesting. why should they work at this analytics company. i like trying to figure this out. like this idea that the five people should work here because

it has an economic value. host: j sort of think it's linked to how it works. or as required rated. anna: i totally do. i should have a one line answer for everything. so this woman came up to me after this event and she said, the same thing happened to my company. this actually the first time that i heard this. like this was like déjà vu for me. they must've already on the blog post because i too once broke down the five smartest people that i know. i'm related. so i feel like there's this

thing that happens in the culture the custody with like the intellectual culture is has passion for itself. it has to do more with like, people read this advice. i have a ton of money, ton of accountability to their investors. it's a responsibility to their employees. in trying to figure out how to do a blog post. here's how you can scale irene get really good people for your core teams. that will set the tone for the rest of your company. ask them to the smartest people they know are. and then push them to recruit them. it and tell them for paying five - $8000 to recruit. i tried so hard to recruit people who were or were not the smartest people i know. back anyway. i think the industry has these values. you can speak to them as well. maybe you have seen them in your

excellent book. inaudible. there will be assigning afterwards. i think that some of the cultures are shaped by the business model. in the incentives rated those are shaped by the incentives of the venture capitalist. she is speed and scale no acceleration or whatever you coupled with the libertarian incubating if you will. for 25 years. fifty years. and you get this weird cultural product. over consideration and research, complex. i don't know what i am talking about. i am so sorry.

host: i don't remember actually. anna: on c-span. affect. host: so it is fair to say, and i guess i am wondering if there are parts of the experience they take with you rated is actually really appreciated. inaudible. a lot of tech folks, think they are doing good for the world. new question that in time of dangerous sometimes. i guess i am wondering sort of bring some of that out, if there are cultural parts that you

appreciated that you took away from it. anna: there is. this is likely, i think the heart of the book. i think there was a lot that i appreciated working in tech. i don't know if in my 30s i would go back and appreciate the same things. i happen to the right age. right earnings to be a sort of ideal employee in certain ways. when it mattered. in my 20s, being in a different city, being told to take this and run with it. i think what i admired and appreciated was the camaraderie and the sort of commitment to a common project, a collective

project if you will. i liked the people had autonomy or seem to have autonomy. at least for a little while. that's also part of the problem. if people have autonomy, don't necessary have the authority to have the autonomy or should not necessarily read but there seem to be so much potential in that. people with the most autonomy sort of replicate power structures that exist externally. initially that was exciting to me. i think that, i really did appreciate some things about the start of culture. i think someone who is and like, deep painful earnest meant. i i don't if you can relate.

they might be wrong but i generally believe people in tech believe they are doing good for the world. i think that is what missing is more like that the problems are systemic. i don't think there necessarily rooted in the individual. but i do wonder like i don't actually know if you're legally able to answer this question. you can move onto the next one if you want to pretty but do you feel it like someone probably heard that uber could not exist if they didn't have this crazy culture. in my question obviously is it should been. if that culture, should not exist. it like maybe that is fine.

inaudible. [laughter]. anna: do see a behavioral, and incentive, in this model of the industry they could potentially be forgiving of something like that. host: i do think that if you boil down are you getting investments, get the next level or whether that, for most companies, the kind of desperate and start doing things, that might not be able to move on. inaudible. and also goes to how things work but i also think there is justification.

for the people, protected and things that are not necessarily fair. i'm not saying this is wrong. for reasons of doing a lot of this stuff. anna: i don't like to go back on my own argument treated to i do think the people on the same structural position. inaudible. do you have to be a jerk to do well in the industry. host: like what kind of ceo this is pretty. >> you're watching "c-span2". for more archives, in september of 2019, microsoft senior researcher mary gray reported in the workforce the drives large technology companies like amazon. google and over. >> you're probably familiar with the category is called online

off-line servicers, uber, they're using the same mechanisms. the putting out requests for somebody to come pick up the food, delivered to the platform. and is an exchange by recording when the food is being picked up and delivered in executing the payment, scheduling work and arrives and getting an address pretty that portion of the work, is automated. but the delivery, the value estimate doing this, to deliver the food. that's the part we often are not considering. more increasingly, were aware of it. affiant said content moderation was a form of this, i do think anybody would have known what i was talking about. so we'll know the content moderation and job the people do, is absolutely dividing a service which is training artificial intelligence. importantly, there's people.

in there performing a very important service. we are focused on a vast world business start up. for below the surface pretty is everything you will ever see. and that's the work i will talk about today. it is the world of editing, it is the world of visibility testing. perhaps in many of these different tasks do drive artificial intelligence rated their what helps structure. i love being in mit. increasingly listing the numbers and it's actually quite hard to mail the ai thing. it is going to keep a person into a moment of this request is perhaps tech 70. so anytime yvonne onto a website and have a little help in the public, noticed a mixture of scripts in a person who is

persisting you. and thinking about that world of work, you've a person missing something on the spot they cannot be quite completed by animation. the public importance of reference that comes to mind, in the book is just places they spent together this is not new. there is continuity here how he treated people and just be a moment because automation will come around and be replaced. it might look like piecework when it is a text file. and manufacturing the good and the button in the boat. for quite some time and usually that was a member of decades, list the important thing to blake. automation eventually made it possible for things to go away and textiles in some cases. in other cases, both labor costs, there also the reality of the nations what we call being

too sophisticated for textile machinery to be able to consume through automation. a person was kept around. but is also in a world of federal contract labor. so for example, the women in the film it appears the good of the time they brought in with the computers which we again, at mit know it was a reference to people prefer the machines. and that's just quick cleats and when the demands senior services as experts. and eventually disappears. there was secured in the employment. but was it less valuable. looking at employment and sing this woman is valuable. precisely because we had already moved forward an idea of what it was to value work. it was full time employment. particular profession and often a particular bodies involved in

this profession. weitzman of privilege who had very specific roles to play. so anyone not play this role seemed tenable. so by the 1960s and the advancement of staffing and temp services quite literally and point you to aaron's beautiful book on the economy, quite literally brokered on the value of the devaluing of women's labor as a resource because young women who were now called dedicated to made great office girls. it was a nonoffensive term at the time. it so keeping that thread moving by the time we got to the 1980s and 2000, and the outsourcing and off shoring of knowledge work. it becomes much harder to make the case that people are doing something that can so easily be replaced precisely because it's also being done workers in the

united states pretty becomes much more obvious in question of labor arbitrage. confine cheap labor of this justice educated is anyone is in the location of generating a request for work. i often perhaps some of my colleagues say the settlement of the case against microsoft. ... ... twelve months, 12 weeks or 12 days. what did it look like for that worker? at the time we did not have a category four that so it is important to note that post- 2000, silicon valley and

especially in 2001, what happens is we have the.com bubble burst. it's at that moment it was settled without caselaw we are going to need question about to do with people who are necessarily but not necessarily were going to hold them for a career, we came up with in this settlement were subtle practices that true contract labor with vendor management systems that often don't leave them with the protection beyond that 12 month contract to be able to say i am employed in these benefits come with my employment think about the history of drawn it's certainly an argument, in a historical trajectory with an argument in this case we see this setting in place from the beginning of this era of laws around labor protection that mostly lead to the valuable

work is the work that cannot be automated without much projection out about what might one day be the target. so policies built for assembly lines and professions that were imagined to be beyond the touch of automation, and then the rise of tampa staffing which is driven much of our economic activity globally with the service industry and attempt staffing industry that serves people's request for needs more than it serves the need to build something. lastly to see the shift towards automated information economy and involves a lot of people doing information service work. it also involves people doing coding, other valuable skills the take a great amount of training. if you think about what it took to code up a website back in the 2000 you had to hand code html, how many people in the room know what i'm talking

about? now it's completely down the software. at that time we paid quite a bit of money to build people's websites it was months. keep that in mind as you think about what can be automated, what is in the auto what remains that communication is beyond automation. it's really what is in question, what is it will be constantly on that horizon that requires human touch for some amount of time. that we can't see growing into a career. with that limit give you how we studied this world. studying a distribution world of work is not most to do with an anthropologist. has it at the big end which shows for businesses as case studies to be the sites were we identified the workers but also the company to show us the insight of their black

box. how did they organize this work? what did the workflow look like? and for companies are stand ins for this world of the mechanism that can both build out artificial intelligence that keep humans in the loop. so other technical continuous deep chief deputy officer in new york city she spoke at cramer bucks in washington d.c. about the power dynamic between big tech companies and governments around the world. so i think the best way to describe what they are is how i came upon the idea to write this book in the first place. back in 2015, there were a number of terrorist attacks across france. in november of 2015 there was the largest terrorist attack which killed over 130 people. it was found after the fact that a lot of these attacks were carried out and organize on social media. social media companies really

got involved in working with agencies to try to figure out how we stop the proliferation of tariffs on a platform, how do we keep them from organizing attacks like this on a platform, it was a rough start in the beginning. one of the people who is responsible for the attacks was captured six months later despite the fact he meant actively posting on facebook for the entire time. there is not a lot of cooperation between governments and tech companies at the time. years later, facebook, google, youtube, amazon, and a few others came together for eight global internet forum to talk about how to fight terrorism specifically. this is something that was really organized by the tech industry and for the tech industry. it was not again a lot of cooperation with government. then skip forward a few more

months, we saw a series of hurricanes in the u.s., hurricane maria hit puerto rico it wiped out their power grid. wiped out cell phone coverage, and fema really did not show up. who showed up? tesla came forward to rebuild their electric grid. google showed up which puts off balloons for internet and telecommunication coverage. at this time i thought okay, what is going all the tech industry? they're not just making spreadsheets and calendars or apps. they're getting involved in areas that are way outside their court mission, areas that used to be the sole responsibility of government. with diplomacy, counterterrorism, infrastructure building, citizen services, i thought there has to be a better way to talk about them than tech. they seem to have a role to play in geopolitics. so the problem was the term nonstate actor, kinda have already evolved from the bad

guy so it instead of setting where the turn to happen. >> thursday when he was on people thing of tech companies as the bad guy. i did some research and as recently as 2010, the dictionary of social science defines nonstate actors with examples like the un and nato. even then they were not considered terrorist. it was sometime around 2012 or 2013 you started seeing the term used with al qaeda and eventually with isis. nonstate actor was taken with bad guys. but clearly these tech companies were not nationstates either. maybe there needs to be another way to talk about them. introduce this concept of nesting so internet -based companies who were working outside of their core technology mission in areas that used to be the area with like the feds, diplomacy and

services. i wrote the article actually in 2015. people who read it said i think this is a little bit of a stretch. i put on the shelf for two years. and after the hurricane i thought i really feel like there's something to this. that is when i put the article out there, it was published and turned into this book. >> host: what's the difference between the big tech companies would have philanthropic concerns like donating with volunteer aid or cisco or uber or any of those that also major and do stuff? >> of the room but the question in the book i do not put twitter in this category. i do put tesla in this category which might be surprising in some ways. the reason though is i am looking at how tech companies are expanding outside of the digital services and into these domains that used to be the territory of government. you don't see uber really

getting involved in counterterrorism yet or at the moment. microsoft is very deeply involved in diplomacy. don't think of cisco is having a real stake in national treaties. this is the differentiation i make between these two. it also people have asked me what about other just big international companies customer gift coca-cola that operates globally and mcdonald's. neither one of them are opening a counterterrorism department. facebook has a larger counterterrorism department the state department doesn't seem all that strange they would. this is one of the reasons i thought it's worth paying attention to. >> so the list of companies that qualify as a net states suit the for those following august google, apple at snout microsoft and anticipated my question, tesla. why tesla? one of the things i looked at in the book is not just how tech companies are expanding

into governmental domains but how they're expanding into what i call in real life in physical infrastructure and services. this is something that tesla and elon musk and he's many sister companies, tesla is doing in some ways more than anywhere else with the solar city operation, they are pursuing partnerships with governments to provide electricity. they're moving into space with starling. there's a lot of endeavors were no longer just looking at the prime products and services like cars. they're really changing the way we think about public infrastructure. so for instance, with the boring company they are producing high-speed rail in chicago. so that's a branding mechanism it's object agenda objected to. [laughter] one of the questions is we now have private sector companies who are in charge of our public infrastructure, what

happened when they don't necessarily this is one of the reasons we talked a lot about in the book in puerto rico we did not they were not under any obligation to stay. we did not have the same responsibilities the government had to for instance provide equally and fairly access to services. >> what do they want? you write in the book they do have beliefs what you mean by that? what are the blades customer. >> one a thing that also distinguishes these companies is that a number of people that work there, large enough contingent let's say. they are driven in some ways by the belief that technology should be used for good. we see this with the case of google. they worked with the department of defense on a very small contract, but can't

how to apply ai to the recognition technology with drones. this is a very small contract they have a handful of people out of google's empire working on it. while people found out inside google this was happening, a number of people resigned in protest, there's a cup companywide letter circulating thing we don't believe google should be in the defense business prayed they let go of the contract they let it expire. it is a significant portion of the drive that people work in these organizations. so i went to see tech to build things and do good. >> so it's not totally unlike a government is constituted on its constituent parts. so this is something one of the interesting features of these particular companies as they are interested in their bottom line, interested in being successful businesses,

you do hear about internal employee protest core beliefs that it should be used for good. i think one of the terms with as dynamic as we may hear them from the sidelines and say gay, google go ahead and protesting anything you don't think is right, we don't actually have a role as citizens to directly influence the process. something that makes us unique phenomenon. and based on your experience and we talk about in the book pretty want to ask a bit about the government with the net states. i will ask you, if you can start by recounting this episode you have in the book i had not read about before our meeting is with the social media companies in the tech companies as interference or for the 18 election and how that went? >> there has been attempts by

the tech industry up to about 2018 and reference to the book to reach out to law enforcement, to big federal agencies try to partner with them and work with them the challenges we all face together. government entity have been slow to respond for there's a meeting held in which the key players google and facebook and others invited members of the department of homeland security. they offered a lot of information about their own strategies to deal with, terrorist on their platforms, the emerging misinformation campaign, on the response there met with silence. the next sunday convened they invited people to the table in 2020 seeing a shift to little but especially from the defense sector to get them to work with them.

i think he put it really well he said a local police department, may be really hard-working and strong, but we would not ask a local police department to defend against an invading army. but that sort of what is happening in the tech sector. we are looking at the tech companies to stand up to own counterterrorism units in their own defense mechanisms and not providing the support they need. see when the disengagement after that episode before this cycle is really an interesting parable in the book about the risk of government standoffish in us. if d.c. and the federal government cannot get their act together to participate the tech companies are going to do whatever they want to do. which i thought was a valuable point. but at the same time it presents a bit of a problem.

we know that d.c. and especially congress, does ncann. we have all of these lawmakers who made their careers and insurance and car sales in medicine and law, they showed zero grassroots technology. armament during the hearings last year when they asked if facebook was a same thing is twitter and how facebook made money they had that not been on the platform at all. want these people to be better if you have thoughts about how the government there overseeing the agencies have basically have no idea what to ask for. >> guest: that's a good question there's a couple of different ways we need to think about it. we need to think about where putting people in congress who do understand the importance of engaging with technology. not just as an ancillary locale but a power player in both domestically and geopolitically. that is number one we are are

starting to see an influx of younger diverse people running for elected office. i have some hope that within a few years we will see the nature of people who are representing us start to reflect society interest more globally. i also think the people who are currently in office, it is not a surprise that technology companies are impacting our daily lives. this is not news in 2020. we have the 2014 elections and the disinformation campaign from foreign actors that was a few years ago we've not seen congressional action. i think there's no real excuse for other than a lack of appetite. i don't think it's a lack of understanding. even if congress people themselves don't grasp all the details of technology, they certainly have access to resources they can learn or inform themselves better about what to do. >> it's hard to be passionate if you can't grasp it.

currently in ought to want to talk about the work of these net states who are stepping up on counterterrorism anti- bigotry i am wondering what you think about the imbalance that exists between those tech companies here and abroad and whether you think there's a certain in balance in the playing field with the first amendment presents, we have structure and how we have speech here which opposes regulations and do lots of things more easily. when you think about that question. >> were talking with someone from the embassy earlier about the fact they have really robust hate speech laws in france missing we don't have anything like the first amendment sort of a wistful way and i was looking at him in a wistful way said wouldn't

it be great if we were somehow able to find a middle ground. i think there could be some sort of movement from people who are at the extreme end of these things there's no mistaking hate speech for anything other than what it is. it's equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater. i think that extremely agree just content if you can't regulate them in some white you could at least put pressure on the tech companies to be more aggressive about labeling if not taken them down. it's something we've seen a little bit with facebook, youtube and google is labeling the content that is problematic. facebook recently has been doing this with information about the coronavirus that is problematic. being potentially suspect.

this is i think a one way to get at making sure consumers are more informed of what they're saying without stripping it away from the internet completely. >> host: do you have any thoughts about whether that is working, can work? >> i think it's early days i will need to study the impact. it's a start, it is better than nothing. i remember a few years ago acting trent asking eric schmidt what the thought was at google about search if it should be something they take a heavier hand in identifying hateful or problematic content. he said we don't censor anything. that kinda contents what does not come up first. it's kind of putting it on some of the skills a little bit behind the scenes again this comes up to the question of the fact that we do not necessarily have visibility into these actions. i think a one of things that makes these companies

interesting from our citizens perspective is this. those asking for transparency were not in a position to say we have algorithms that show who you are d ranking or flagging or not we keep results and help they're doing a good job. >> a reminder all the programs are seeing now are unavailable to watch in their entirety @booktv.org. just like the author's name or the book title in the search box at the top of the page. next dinner off their programs on technology, joanne mcneil speaking at harvard bookstore in cambridge massachusetts. she argued internet use has been from individualistic, spontaneous and voluntary to be data and advertising driven. >> at a party, the wallflower people can see your standing in the corner. you can easily be the creep people can't necessarily see

you watching them. i think it's one of those things that has to do with the elements that make interactions online somewhat unusual from physical world interactions sometimes because we take for granted how much our communication is woven into our daily lives. that core difference of physical and digital world interactions i want to make clear in that title. >> host: say said lurking is your preferred way of interacting with the intraday prints and she wrote a book about it i have to ask where their specific places online that you sort of consider yourself primarily a lurker? where are you lurking these days? >> i would say probably i've never had a reddit profile. but i spent a lot of time in reddit. especially the corners of

reddit that are very sweet and unexpected. i think there are some that are very toxic and have many problems. there are also some that are created that people facing homelessness it's all about exchanging resources with somewhat of a layer of m&m and he because let's a lot about screen nays rather than real nays necessarily. while i don't participate myself, i have worked on their there's a lot of communities that i find useful information wise. and then in the book i go through communities i was very present and, how their art chat rooms and message boards. before i leave a post i would definitely spend possibly months making sure i would be

welcome there. [laughter] >> host: i am noting the title is lurking and we do have folks lurking at the edge of the room if you want to choose to sit down you are welcome to. just like the internet we will not make you participate in any particular way. [laughter] i think that point about reddit is so interesting because one of the sort of weird things, i also will admit i am a reddit lurker i read a fair amount of our legal advice as a lawyer which is probably a form of -- it's kind of like i'm causing myself pain is causing you and other people. i wear trent rita fairmount of. [inaudible] i think it is funny because it has actually gotten -- at think a lot of people's way of interacting with this particular form of the internet is through twitter despite the fact it is reddit will someone will post something very ridiculous and

a lot of people respond on twitter totally departed from the actual context for which it would read. speech is a classic example of how a compensation that i'm sure still is usually quite bizarre and heated in its own ways on reddit. if you take it to another platform like twitter where there is already this underlying ironing attached to it in the sense you always have to be above the content. i think that's what makes twitter distinctive, you can't really be too sincere about things. what i think is incredibly funny about that with twitter is in the book i talk about when i first got on twitter i was told i was too much of a jerk for this social network i remember feeling look at all of these nice people sharing what they are eating for breakfast. why am i not a nice person?

they freely share peaceful moments of their life why don't have to make weird jokes. now i feel like i am overwhelmed with that kind of edge to the content and that everything has to be -- it's an element of distancing yourself from the platform that if you can laugh at everything, you're not so entwined, you have some layer of personal distance from what you are doing there. >> i think in some ways lurking can be a way to distance yourself pretty or not invested as the people choosing to post and i will say from someone who is a lurker online, it is not a lack of -- it's not a lack of investment. i'm not actually less invested than people who post i'm probably more invested than those who post but i still get

that sense of distance. so you sort of frame the book both in terms of lurking but in terms of the idea of becoming a user. sort of one of the things you talk about a fair amount in the book is facebook which i thought was particularly interesting because it features like the off-line profiles where for those who are unfamiliar, off-line profiles are the ultimate in renaming because what an off-line profile is a some poor person decided they did not want a facebook profile and then facebook constructs the profile for them from the things they do in other not on facebook. more generally how do you think about ubiquitous tracking on the web? how does that change the experience of being online generally or lurking more specifically? >> is another element of the title lurking is not something possible on the internet which is designed to track activity and have analytics, those

elements that are just part of the function of the social networks. especially something like facebook where it's attached to having data on its users. and so, that's another element of where there's an advantage you can leave without a trace you can walk away from things and perhaps if we don't have a backwardness surveillance cameras in the future,. [laughter] so it's a way of leaving without a trace. sue and organist which topics a little bit one part of the book i read was a lot of interest on part of a broader chapter entitled clash. as someone who at times identified with that label and

actively new what you describe, i was really appreciating the humility of which she will process it specifically you're going to resist the urge to leave a grand theory y women in the tech community are more likely than professional commentators in new york to address concerns. i'm not going to ask you to weave the grand narrative, you avoid it but just note this seems a little bit overly kind to me? i look at the period of feminist organizing and it's really a lack of attention to race and class analysis. that ended up bleeding over into what i would call the white woman focus with diversity box checking that was still look at with conferences like what they offer the way in which there is a -- it's a very different version of feminism then you

would see in like new york the new york professional commentators your contracting but at the same time, it's a version of white feminism. certainly there were bright spots you talked about the culture you talked about that. i would be curious about your process and thinking about that chapter is a real moment when you are reflecting on how to not just come off as nostalgic in a way that is historical about the positive parts of the internet and more generally about tech feminist your own reflection on that. >> guest: that was an intense moment and an eye-opening one where at that time i was based in new york. i remember as elements of harassment became unavoidable on platforms like twitter and

facebook, i found the professional feminist media at that time was not necessarily addressing some of the elements that went into this harassment some of the resources i found that were pertinent for the feminism had wiki of resources that just seemed so much beyond, being a media presentation of gender and equality. that period of time, we can see it coincides with activism too, certainly black lives matter.

i do remember especially at the women's march in 2016 having a feeling like wow we've come so far a lot of basic understanding of inclusion that would have been quite radical three years prior art excepted much more broadly. i am always hesitant to name certain factors more than others as why that might be. i do think as problematic as twitter is in the major platforms are, the nature of having something like twitter where you have trending topics in someone could create a #, use that to discuss personal experiences of oppression.

having that community element in a platform that's designed for multiple communities to push forward some more progressive ideas. i say that with a lot of hesitation because for the most part, i feel those platforms that were designed for everyone are themselves very dangerous. this is one of those trade-offs but it is a trade-off because you have a twitter account, you followed many types of people. you follow follow people from backgrounds very, very different from yours. so seeing their experience -- seeing their experience and their arguments as part of a conversation in the part of twitter that having a # so

equality for white women would be the key -- one of the turning points for the # activism. it is something they don't want to discount but i don't want to credit too much i don't want to discount twitter's role but i don't want to credit twitter because it certainly did nothing for that to happen. twitter is as a company did nothing for that user activism. >> you're watching book tv on cspan2 and we are taking a look at some recent author programs about technology. next from april 2019 to sociologist julie upright has that generations that preceded them. >> now we have kids growing up where there was always mobility, mobile devices smart

phones internet enabled, ipads, laptops all of that stuff. kids are now being given these devices at infancy. in 1979 there's a band called the tubes out if you need these guys. they're kind of a punk band out of san francisco a lot of fun. they had an album cover that was called remote control and the album cover was kind of a wink and a nod to think about the evil impacts of television. people thought television was going to work kids brains and things like that they had a tv right at the kids face in the little crib. i'm going to show you a little picture now now and 2018, actually this is a real product it's available on amazon where the kid has an ipad right at their face from day one. that is others like tasers potty chairs that have the ipad right there right at the crib so we are actually feeding digital technology to

children before they acquire their language skills. so, neuropsychologist though, neuroscientist know there's something called brain plasticity that children's brains are malleable like plastic and what you put into them, the influences and the things they are exposed to shape those neural pathways that shape the brains of children. what is the outcome? what's what happened when we have babies like you saw infants who are acquiring digital skills before acquiring language? what would be the outcome of that? we don't know yet that fast stimulation of videos you see on youtube, all of the input and stimulation happening. most parents now also say they have booktv on at the same time. most report they're both going at the same time there is always stimulation there's always noise or sound or visual coming in paired what

is that due to attention and thinking in these neural pathways that are being shaped by all that input? we don't know yet that will be to be determined on the horizon. that's where we are at now in terms of digital technologies study guided that being fed to children. steve went we could say this is re- wiring brains right? these children are going to think differently than you do and that's where we are at. now, i told you people are coming untethered. one of the reasons are becoming on the apps so many choices. you heard christopher say that i worked as a researcher with eharmony and i helped develop some of their products when it started coming out of my dissertation. what's happening now is eharmony was web-based service now we have phones and apps

with all of these things were people are just swiping. he becomes a game. what's happens is it is presented to young people, this idea you have it on limited sea of choices in front of you in terms of romantic relationships. so wouldn't you think with this on limited sea of choices we would find just the right choice for you? but what happens is, we see this in consumer psychology there is a paradox of choices afoot. the idea is that it's kind of funny but the more choices you have it makes it more difficult to choose. they did a study called the jam study, fever bitterness store a costco somewhere where they're giving out samples of food of cheese or something like that? they have a table set up and they will give you something. they set that up with samples

of jama. the first day they had 24 varieties of jam. they said hey, here's all these jams, try anyone you want. and then they gave a coupon to buy a jar of jam after that. the second day, it came back in instead of 24 varieties they only gave six choices and the same coupon to buy the jar of jam. while commonsensical you would think the more choices you're going to find just that jam you like apricot or strawberry or whatever that jam is you like you're going to find it there. but it turns out, that is not the case. when people were only a tenth as likely to buy any jam at all, when they had more choices as opposed to when they had less. so, we are in the situation now where there is a paradox of choices and that's called choice overload the more choices we have makes it harder for us to choose anything at all. so people are now swiping,

swiping, swiping maybe low find somebody a little hotter a little richer little more interesting, maybe someday i don't fight with. until they keep swiping and swiping but they don't end up choosing anyone at all. in this study just came out last week, half of americans are not in a romantic relationship, 65% of high school kids have never had a romantic relationship now if you go back to world war ii, a lot of people married their high school sweethearts will where is that they don't have that now. it's change the dynamics of everything. >> host: one of the reasons i brought that up and another reasons they're doomed is the swiping swiping is kinda easy come easy go for dates. you can get a date so easily that people just disappear it's called ghosting. they take off the don't ever

contact the person again they don't text some of you might've ghosted someone it one time or another, that's what they are doing and guess what, this same idea of swiping and the choice overload in the ghosting is now happening in the workplace. because there is this idea you go on linkedin there's endless pleasure of jobs available that people are now ghosting their employers, thinking they can just get another one and another one so this idea of the endless sea of choices is changing people's willingness to commit to something, because maybe there's something incrementally better out there be at a job, romantic relationship, changing a dynamic of commitments because of this endless sea of choices available. what's happening to us changing the quality of adulthood and what adulthood means. there were sociologists that studied the markers of

adulthood the five markers here's what they are, completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent with a full-time job marrying and having a child, for go back to 1960 by the age 30, 77% of the women and 65% of men had achieved all five of those markers by early 30s. but if you fast-forward ten now, it is less than half of 30-year-old women and a third of the men. so in a sense, we are living in a period of expended adolescents as part of the qualities of an tethering all of these traditional markers of adulthood. now some people say maybe we should just unhook from these devices and things like that. it is becoming harder and harder because in one sense they are addictive which i

didn't used to like that word but they are now once we've got mobile phones available to us they are baking in qualities that are similar to one trent one armed bandit slot machine. we talk about gambling addiction don't they? have you ever played the slot machine? you pull the arm, ding ding ding ding they roll in maybe when maybe you don't right? i don't when i'll try again and try again and suddenly ding ding ding ding ding the lights are going in the sirens because you have one. that's exactly how instagram works, facebook works you are scrolling just like those things are scrolling in front of you on the slot machine sometimes the content is interesting sometimes it's kind of boring but nevertheless it keeps drawing you back in for more. the same behavioral drivers that are the most predictive of people coming back for more are baked into our social media now. it becomes harder and harder

to put those phones down. even the ding event alert, a message have you ever seen a dingo often for people check their phones around you? sometimes people are even feeling the vibration when it's not even vibrance it out without there was a message maybe there was period, they just want to keep checking and checking in checking, people are checking their phones thousands of times a day. so the problem becomes this. i'm not trying to be amish comic going back to the horse and buggy days i'm not saying that. what i am saying is the combination of our devices and are connectivity and unhooking from the stabilizing social structures have left particularly younger people on more. we are seeing the highest rates now things like anxiety, depression, then we have seen in 30 years. and i work in the university so i am right at the front lines of this i see it up close. i don't if you realize this

but in the colleges now, a quarter of students are on some kind of sight but to row cake medication for a psychic disorder. the key is coming untethered, it means coming on board in some ways. we don't have the stabilizing social structures but are stabilizing people's mental and physical health. and so we need to sort of reinvent that and how can we do that? as we pull away from the social structures like churches for example, how can we create new structures to provide some stability for young people? because obviously we have a little bit of a problem on our hands. >> will look at our books about technology who in january of this year discuss the next level of artificial intelligence involves decision-making. so i'm locking onto the computer revolution when i was a kid computers were big old things that nobody could use and my mom did not know the difference between software

and hardware. i had to explain it to her. we've gone through a massive democratization of computing technology. i believe we are in the same trust today with ai and data, that new technology stack. ai is done to us but we do not have control over it. data is overwhelming at a distance and best we get a data visualization. i have had the honor of interviewing hundreds of people as a technology analyst for a few years and asking them what i'm frustrated about of technology could solve one problem for you, what would it be? >> and over and over and over again, i heard a similar answer. it looks sort of like this. this is why i'm pretty sure i know what i'm doing building machine learning over 30 years i was funded by the human gene

project hundred million dollars budget bill thousands of machinery that propagation who would've known so many years later i would notice talking about. i believe this background has given insight that is key. there's something missing all of these years. not something that is missing as we have been coming up from the technology instead of putting humans at the center of the equation. i'm honored to be about to sit dig in my backside is honored. as i can see those who work closely with doug. i like she called it putting humans at the center of the equation again on it called

for a while the decision architect what is a decision? it's an action that leads to an action, that action and a complex way has some stuff. i don't of the buying that scarf is going to do to the world. it's going to have impact. actually don't feel very motivated because i can't see that impact it's not physical and present for me it does not grab my primate brain that makes me think gosh i really need to buy that hybrid car. i can't see it. and the data stack today, they ai stack today is not giving that to me. this is my dog, his name is bowie. i'm training him to be a service dog. i have had him pretty much his whole life since he was about 11 months old. i had this awful thing happened to me to it have a trainer who is teaching me to it train the service dog and she taught me about abc, the

behavior concert once in my head exploded that's exactly what i heard from humans that i've been interviewing the executives i've been talking to there always talking about a context or in the kitchen i say sit behavior my dog sits, consequences get the cookie this is universal it's not runway of using ai and data and i'll tell you how that slipped in in a moment. what i think, pretty certain this is a way to think about it because it has the lowest friction to how humans naturally think, busy people live in complex environments they don't have much brainpower for optimization or inference methodology or any of those fancy things when you have to meet them where they are at. the fact that we are not has

created a giant cultural barrier between people with government at the head of businesses, and even me as we try to make decisions and meet evidence and ai to help make sure those decisions have a ripple effect that is good. so far as i'm working with they have to decide what crop to plant. down the road they don't know if that crop will make them productive because they have fewer migrant workers. the situation has changed. businesses might decide what corner or product to launch what price a change as they talk that through you hear much of what my dog hears. at the situation, there's a behavior were going to watch this at this price. and not down the road somewhere for my dog it's immediate he's a dog. but for us and what makes us special as beacons speak to long chains of consequence. but that's limited and they need computer help.

so again the decision is an imaginative process in our heads as we think through actions in some context that will lead to some result. if you remember nothing else or member this template and what's cool about decision intelligence which is what the book is about because we start with humans i can teach this today and you can take it home immediately so that's my promise if you stick with the talk. okay. >> host: how do you make decisions today? i'm sorry to say i only recently learned this especially in a complex world coming back from human evolution we don't really think through the consequences of our decisions very easily or much more likely to not think through these rationally and instead use social signaling we look for someone who looks successful in our society, is dominant or prestigious we simply copy the

decision they been making turns out that's very effective and had been hugely successful for the human race it's what separates us from any other species we are great copiers cultural evolution theory says we develop patterns that individuals can't understand. but that society like the unconscious process of genetic evolution will come up with these behaviors. this is what we are programmed for, we need to be developing

new ways of coping action at a distance we have talked about it's important to. anybody who has worked with data, we tend to focus on things we can measure easily. money, size, price, we tend to overlook reputation, happiness, morale, and yet i have never built a decision model that did not have at

least one feedback loop that did not follow something intangible, soft factor. we must start talking to the sociologist, the cultural revolution is, and all of those other disciplines to understand the soft factors. the decision intelligence creates a roadmap for how to do that. did the thing i didn't say is a futures no longer like the past that problems we have seen that path in the future is the same at the base on the path they don't warrant the situation is change. suddenly all the swans used to be white and not the black one. i believe, that ai, and di which i'm going to tell you about, decision intelligence, can solve the problem. i grew up in a period of technology optimism. we were all sharing all of our code and that was going to democratize reality it's going to collaborate. as long as we had a dream.

i don't think we realized that dream. i think decision intelligence will help us go there. i think we have created a number of links in the change, and data machine, social media, there's one more thing we need to make a big difference to have a long linear impact. that is di, will start to talk about more practically now. how do we view di? we start with people we don't say where is the data, we don't say we can't do this ai like thing without data, i'm sorry guys, data is great, so huge amount of human knowledge that is in no data set whatsoever. you're good at knowing how actions lead to outcomes. your homework for tonight is to go home, ask a friend who did not come to the stock, how they think about a complex decision? i promise you they'll talk about actions, those actions will have intermediate effects

that will ultimately lead to outcomes and they'll talk but the context. so what i do, i sit down with a diverse group of experts and diversity is great, old, young, gender, race, and i say what are the outcomes you're trying to achieve? there are so many companies that have drastically big projects who never sat down and goes to the outcomes. okay. i go and i consulted family levels with many organizations i said what you trying to achieve? most of the outcomes are different for each person let me tell you don't need technology to get better. you just need to have a brainstorming process for you think so what are the outcomes were trying to achieve as a team? is it higher revenue? net revenue after two years? is it some kind of military advantage? when a military advantage that does not create a backlash that hits us ten years later

with the psychological reputation of our country. what are the outcomes we are trying to achieve? make sure you ask that question. second, brainstorm to the action. many folks do not take the time kevin open brainstorming session where they have really bad ideas for the actions we can take to achieve those outcomes do that when the blood from the creative side of analytical side of your brain which may be over here, you don't have room for the creative side. so separate those two, spent some time being creative and then spend some time being analytical. these triangles here our ai fits in. in most decision models, i believe as we democratize ai this is the pattern. this is how we do it. we talk about a decision i'm facing today. i saw greta on tv.

she was so compelling, she said we've got a climate crisis and the way we solve this is really simple, stop worrying about analysis. at the very least pay for some trees. there are organizations all over the world that will take your money and buy trees. those trees will grow and that will sequester some carbon. if enough people do this, perhaps on their own i don't know if trees alone would do it. anyway she said it would make a big difference. i have not sent any money to its reorganization yet. because i cannot visualize how many i might send leads to a chain of events to some outcome. if i'm going going to use ai to benefit me, i want a visceral, interactive, fun experience. this is what i think is the future of ai. it's going to look like a video game and i hope we can

do some of this in the basement because we can do this and walk through the spaces. what were doing in these spaces, we are expanding with actions we might take and were letting the computer help us understand the events that sets in motion to lead to the consequences. that is at a personal level, highly valuable at an organizational level. >> you can watch all the programs you seen here and many other author discussions about technology online booktv.org. : : : c-span has unfiltered coverageo, the supreme court in public policy even from the presidential primary through the impeachment process and now the federal response to the

coronavirus. you can watch all of c-span public affairs programming on television, online or listen on every radio app and be part of the national conversation through c-span daily "washington journal" program or through our social media feed, c-span, created by american americas cae television provider. >> hello everybody and welcome, my name is beth long and i work for politics and prose, thank you so much for joining us and our online format where were continuing our tradition of politics and prose author event of bringing the authors you love in their bookstore community. at any time during the event click the green button to purchase the book on the tnt website, we are offering