tv and sunday at 2 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 3. working with our cable affiliates as we explore the american story. up next a discussion on technology politics and society with journalist kara swisher and sam altman. this was held at manny's. >> so we are going to kind of move chronologically here i want you guys for those in the audience that haven't been to conversations with me already and haven't met you talk a little bit about the utopia that the early technologists were thinking about when they thought about how technology and the world wide web would interact with politics. what did people think was going to happen with intersection of tech and politics? >> well i don't think they were thinking at all, i think that

one of, a lot of things get written after people become billionaires or after they become successful. but having been there at the very beginning actually, lived in washington i worked for the washington post when the internet was actually born, not when it was born because it was there before the government entity was commercialized for the first time is when they and they released it and there was legislation which i covered and actually al gore, that's how i met al gore because he was principal considered a brief behind the and he did in fact invent the internet. and he was integral to that. so you imagine that people had great thoughtfulness towards what was going to happen or the implications. i mean they absolutely did not. and i think that is the lie that is now being borne out today that you think that you know mark zuckerberg for example, and to name someone who is plunging toward disaster right now [ laughter ] had an idea of what was going to happen. i don't think they had any idea whatsoever and in fact designed the systems in a way that if

you had an idea what was going to happen and any kind of anticipation you might have made any other choice. >> i don't think people knew what was going to happen because it's unimaginable what has happened, 14 years ago facebook was a website that no one took seriously in mark zuckerberg's dorm room. the first prototype of the iphone i don't think it had been made. the speed and the size and the impact that this happened i think we have just lived through like one of the three great technological revolutions in history. and the rate of change of technology is so much faster than the rate of change of people. certainly in television but we can update our own thought processes. i agree that people didn't think about what was going to happen. but it was not out of any malice, it was just like, it's hard to come i remember what it was like a beginning. it's hard to imagine that a got

this big, that it went this well. >> you're saying they didn't have malice, that's a pretty low bar. that shouldn't be the bar. if thoughtlessness can have the same amount of damage that, and my issue with a lot of it as it began to develop they pretended that they didn't have the power that they were collecting. and so the thoughtlessness continued and continues today. with the people. >> certainly the thing that is gone wrong is when it became clear this was going to be as big as it has become, people didn't stop and say okay, what do we do now? but at the beginning when people were just sort of imagining what the internet was going to be like and what mobile was going to do, i don't think anyone could have really predicted this. >> i remember when i first moved here, i went to

northridge and all these kind of hackers that were talking about you know, afterwards we are not going to have governments, you know tech is going to kind of free everyone to break our chains. and was in there this kind of undercurrent of folks who thought of technology as a way to break down the systems of power? >> well, unusual, because it was all white men who, you know are really the most under seized people on the planet. [ laughter ] >> i'm going to say no for that one. >> it's a hard no. [ laughter ] >> you know it's interesting when i think back because i came here, i had written a book about aol which was the first commercialized. >> i remember, chat rooms? >> i was hired by the wall street journal it was even called the internet it was online services. and i was first to cover the internet for them. and i have told the story before when i got the job a lot of the media reporters said oh you're here to cover cb radio. and i was like no, i'm here to

cover the medium that is going to decimate all of your industries, nice to meet you. [ laughter ] >> and they haven't changed one bit. >> it was really interesting because you got a sort of front row seat. i remember, by the way google did not even exist for a long time from when i was here, but it was mark injuries, he might've been a teenager or something, you know early yahoo when there were five or six people, bezo's i met, it was really early. early on. >> okay so let's take a look at a giant leap forward to closer today and part of the reason why wanted to do this conversation with you guys as a relates to civic engagement is i think we are living in a time when people have a lot of anger, tension, anxiety around the intersection of how technology has affected our politics, particularly the 2016 election. but one of the first questions i would ask you is do you think people would be feeling this

way if hillary clinton had won? >> yes, but they'd be different people, 50 percent of people would be feeling this way. >> even if russia had tried, because part of it was this feeling that the russia co- opted our technology in order to make it so that donald trump would win. so there is this feeling this tool that was supposed to help us messing everything up. if donald trump had one, even given that, sorry if hillary clinton had one, do you think there would be this must angst and anxiety? >> i personally do and i think i think there were powerful things that people were trying to help hillary win. i think there were a lot of people on both sides trying to use the platform to influence. >> i remember, it was only two election cycles ago when candidates were saying what do i have to think about it at all? can i just do tv? so the speed which with technology has changed politics

and the degree to which i think most candidates still don't understand that is huge. and i think that a lot of people wish that hadn't happened, that that change hadn't happened so quickly and politics. but i think, i always believe people when they say they are angry, i think that is true. but it's very hard to articulate the price precise reason you are angry. and you see that a lot of will the way people talk about the election. some of it has changed i would say in a bad way at least it's different. but it's hard to precisely articulate what that is and what we are going to do about it. >> donald trump is very good at the internet and brad parscale even though he is a loathsome creature . he has his campaign manager for trump and was digital director and he is the one that really did understand how to use and target people and really in

some nefarious ways, and some very effective ways appeal to fear and anger, targeted people online and use the services the way you would sell cookies or a movie, or something like that, really did understand. i think the clinton campaign was still operating in a old- style, a digital style and so was the democratic party. and one of the things that has really been striking is the original people a couple of cycle it was howard dean and joe, what's his name? trippi a right. we have him one year. he had done some of the early digital stuff for howard dean which was a effective initially but the problem was not a b but had a cell phone not everybody was online. and then the people that we interviewed back there was ralph friede, because one of the interesting things is when you think about it because for much of the 20th century most of the media outlets were liberal or left center,

centrist, but certainly not conservative. and so even though they say we are fair, they just weren't. we were liberal essentially. andy right wing did not have a place to talk until online, and so they got very good at it very early, because they were the out of power people. and so they moved to cabell, fox news, it's hard to think of it now but cabell was an outlying medium back then and the same thing with internet. the use the internet very well and they learn how to community and use it very well and he learned how to use it in a more nefarious way. "do you think we have moved too fast? sam you said twice her that no one could've imagined how much it would change 15 years. do you feel like things we develop to quickly and society is just not catching up and we should've gone slower? >> is that even possible? >> i would love it if that were possible, but in the world that we have, the fastest moving

company tends to win. the company that gets the most skill and proves the fastest and most products and that's mostly good but it has some important negative consequences and i think we are all now wrestling with what to do about that. but i think it's like, it's very hard to stop progress. that probably won't work and i think what we can do, and i think what we need to figure out how to do now is how do we as society adapt more quickly when the world can change so fast? i think it's better to try to get better then society correcting. and we so far have been very bad about it. >> the way you're talking about it is as if we don't have control over, right? we haven't done this. certain people have done this, and if these run these companies, so what's really interesting about silicon valley that i have covered is that when there are successes,

we sort of celebrate these people like they are geniuses. i always say they tell me, they said that all day telling me how smart they are like continually not you, sam, your lovely. [ laughter ] again, lobar. [ laughter ] >> i'll still take it. >> take it, take it, run, run, run. write down valencia, keep going. [ laughter ] until you get to palo alto. they spent a lot of time telling you how smart they are and when things go wrong they move into the wii. but if you notice that with zuckerberg. have you noticed that? well, the community wants to work together to fix this problem. and i was in an interview with him and i was like you own the community. so he said i think the community should own it. and i said well you own 60 percent of the company and you have unprecedented power over this giant organization of which you have no ability to run.

and yet the people should work together. i said will window the people get power? it's hysterical to watch. >> i have a question for you. you think mark zuckerberg should be the one who decides to get to use facebook and who gets to say stuff and what you can say? >> yes, i think he built the company it's product. >> he's not a government, and this is the live, this is a for- profit company which mark zuckerberg is now a 60 for billionaire. >> in some senses he's bigger than a government. >> is terrifying. he is uncountable, unfirable , i called him a mix between he makes wolverine and deadpool and add a zombie or two. [ laughter ] >> i don't agree with that. i am a little warm, i got to change brands. >> i'm going away for this. i feel like.

i feel like you're going to get a boob shot. [ laughter ] >> people call it changing hat, you color changing t-shirts. >> i certainly would like to have different rules for what you're allowed to say and what you can see. but it scares me to think that a small handful of people that are not accountable to us and not elected by us and can do whatever they wanted to make the decision about who gets to exist online who doesn't. so i would welcome regulations for who gets the megaphone and who gets a platform and what you're allowed to say and what you are allowed to say. but it's surprising to me to hear people who are in the technology company we are with the companies to make these rules not that we want a government that we elect. >> but broadcasters have been doing it forever so i don't know if you had a problem in the new york times that it was

like 12 white guys on the upper west side of new york to decide who was on the front page of the new york times every day. >> actually i think that was matthew. >> this is not different, what's different is the sizes unprecedented size and influence and impact in the amplification of situation. but is not un-similar to the person that ran cbs and nbc and abc when there were only three networks. >> to be clear reprehensible. i think that's always been the world. that doesn't mean we can't shoot. this would always coalesce is power in the hand of a certain small group of people which were typically the same people who, and then the discussion turns to say right now for example the discussion on tribalism how there so much tribalism the issue isn't tribalism, for most people. and what happens is for instance on these platforms,

the people building them have never felt unsafe in their life for one second. and so what happens is it's for twitter they have suddenly gotten attacked online. you know they've suddenly gotten straight, and they said oh, this is really hard, and i said well welcome to the rest of the world for women, people of color, and the rest of us. we get this all the time. and so what happens is, the diversity at the top is lacking, is if there was a more diverse tap top you would get a very different outcome. >> i am all for a different outcome and i'm waived more for an investment of fix harassment and discrimination online. for all that tech has done wrong, i think the one thing they have done right is for all those people who have been denied a voice, for all of those things they finally have a voice. and we are seeing a huge social change come from that. and on the hugely negative things that have gone wrong and for all of the ways we haven't figured out how to adapt to

this which is huge, the fact that everyone in the world now has access to platform in a voice we have seen incredible change. >> i think about the dakota pipeline, think about police brutality. >> but they don't have a voice because they don't own it. that is the lie. it sort of is, because it's owned by the same people. we just did a recent ricoh, i did a piece called the men and no women of facebook. and we just put their pictures and it was like white guy, white guy, white guy, asian guy, that was the whole thing. and at the time either mark or someone called and said that's really unfair and i said you hired them i'm just putting up their pictures for people to see. but recently we did another one and i don't mean to pick on facebook in particular because every tech companies like this. but we put up all the pictures and we said there are more people named jim here than

there are women, it was something like that. and then as for people of color, will kevin's picture is in black and white, that's the only difference. it was ridiculous it was insanity that they have, if you look at these management structures, they can talk but they don't run facebook. these different groups can do things, but they don't own google. >> hypothetical then. if something changed and the people that ran these companies actually represent the public what you think would change in our politics? >> it would be much better internet, i can tell you that. it would be quantum leap better. >> i'm not arguing against the effort for greater diversity leadership it seems like the civic discourse online is dirty, it's difficult, it's not particularly reductive and my question is how does a more diverse top make the level of discourse.

>> politics is about power, that's what i think it's about. and who has it and who doesn't have it. and who is allowed to wield it and do things. and these jobs have very real world implications. so the people that are in power matter, and the people that are in power matter. the ownership of these companies and who owns them. look at why, dear, you are making enormous efforts to diversify the pool, correct? >> certainly and diversifying our partnership has been reflected and i believe this works i really do. i do think it's separate, it's somewhat separate, it's not the only way to make these platforms work better. government regulation about how we handle discourse and online harassment and what you're allowed to say a . i think there's another way to do it and i personally will be more comfortable with that than a small group of people, no matter what they look like that

are in absolute power for ever and on fireable making decisions.? so let's talk about politics for second and the reason why wanted to bring you two together as we are all friends, when you came to me and said i'm thinking about running for political office separate from each other. i think you were considering running. and we talked about it. [ laughter ] we talked about running for governor of california and you and i talked about running for mayor of san francisco. and i was like awesome, how can i help? or what would you talk about? so tell me a little bit about why you were thinking about running for office and why you chose not to. >> i was thinking about it because i was thinking the state is in a bad place particularly with the cost of living and the cost of housing and if that doesn't get fixed the state is going to evolve into a very unpleasant place. one thing that i have really come to believe is that you

cannot have social justice without economic justice and california feels unattainable. and i think it would take someone with no loyalties to sort of very powerful interest groups. i would not be indebted to other company so maybe i could try couple of variable things. >> so you're like bloomberg without an obsession to coca- cola. [ laughter ] >> i do know he had an obsession. >> hello, big gulp?? this session is brought to you by coca-cola. i don't think i have enough experience to do it. so maybe i could do a few things that would be really good but i would know how to deal with the thousands of things that need to happen. and more importantly than that to me personally, i wanted to spend my time trying to make sure we get artificial intelligence built in a good way which to me is the most important problem in the world

and not willing to set aside for profits. >> i'm going to get the power to screw people. >> i love the honesty. [ laughter ] >> i would have limousines idling in front of my house, things like that. [ laughter ] and then i would want to get thrown out of office in a really dramatic fashion. [ laughter ] that's what i want. i to do it. it's like, in valley of the dolls, all of you! i want it because i was complaining too much and i thought this is ridiculous, why shouldn't i do something? it's very simple. and then after the trump action i thought if this idiot can get elected, i can really get elected. [ laughter ] the brakes were off for people, if i can say i'm a small if i can pay him a small complement, the brakes

were off for people and he is unhinged and everything. which is not necessarily a bad thing but he happens to be a bad thing. >> and that's a good thing. >> i built the space because there are millions of people that are changing the way things are run. >> that was a similar thing and now of course with that untested squad of ladies that is run by cortez, she's the head of it, it looks like and they got a squad of them i want to join the squad now so i've got to run for congress. i hope they let the old white lady in. let's have her for humor. [ laughter ] what i thought about that, this is the city i've lived here for 20, long time. and it was important instead of just complain about things coming to do something about it. now we have a new mayor so you

should give this mayor a chance. i think it's really important not just to be difficult. >> so we can have one or two more questions and they were going to open it up to q&a. >> here's what's going to happen, can ask you each individual questions and that i'm going to ask you the question as a panel. your first op-ed in the new york times was entitled mark zuckerberg and the expensive education. >> element for the rest of us not him. >> have you learned? >> no, i wouldn't say really. >> he's a really nice man. he's a nice guy, he's a personally nice but he's causing enormous damage. i think one of the things that you looked at the podcast, everybody was focused on the holocaust deniers part where they don't mean to live. and i'm like, they do meet a lie, and they lie a lot. that to me was an insane thing

to say but that got a lot of the attention. that essentially was why mark zuckerberg should never get on a stage with me again. because the last time he almost sweated to death. [ laughter ] and he defended holocaust deniers. [ laughter ] how do i get him to say things like that? so the exchange i was most disturbed by and i have written about it since was when i kept pressing him on the impact of his invention, on me and more myanmar, they have gotten pretty sloppy and the products were not thought out properly and they were introduced properly and they didn't have the proper people in place to manage it and it created genocide. and how do you feel about that? how do you feel about that that you made this badly? and it was real life consequences. and instead of, what he said was, he goes, i'm not really interested in solutions.

i think we should fix the situation. we should fix the situation, and i was like, i got that. but you cause the problem or it so how do you feel about would you cause? and so six times i asked him the same question. six times. and i said yeah but i want to know how you think about it. >> if i was in his shoes and i had billions of people all like, i had all these things weighing on my shoulders, how could he start to let that affect his emotional strength, because he would be able to make it through the day otherwise. >> because he took the money in the job. i'm sorry, he's an adult, i don't mean to be rude but stop treating him like he's a juvenile. oh this poor hoodie clad boy, it so hard for him. my kids can take more pressure than he can. [ laughter ] but anyway, i asked him six times it went on for a while and got really uncomfortable and he kept saying we got it fixed it. and i said yeah but you cause the problem, how do you feel about it? people died, and he finally got

exasperated because i did it so many times and i did that on purpose. and he said what you want me to say? and i said how about starting off with i'm really sorry that i did cause people to die? that would be the human reaction, right? and then secondly i would wonder if i was capable of handling this thing you know, if i'm the right person to do this because it does have real- world implications. and then i asked who should be fired for this? who should be fired? and you know, he hemmed and hawed, and he said i guess me because i'm the ceo and the founder and i control it and i'm the chairman. and he goes, well, do you want me to fire myself? and i said that would be fine [ laughter ] you know what i mean? i just want them to understand the implications. >> with that actually solve the problem? if mark zuckerberg went to hawaii and was like okay goodbye, guys. i'm done. we still have billions of people, and i look recently on

his post, doesn't matter what you post about your can have tens of thousands of people attacking each other about brett kavanaugh, palestine, sexual assault, whatever. this whirlpool of hate that sure, he's the one that starts the whirlpool but he was replaced by someone else when people still be doing it? >> i don't know. i think they need big-time help from people there who have more global viewpoints that may not be living in the bubble of palo alto that have a bigger understand her of ethical issues and societal and philosophical issues. and these are people, if you know them are lovely people, but ill-equipped to deal with it, i think. >> i want to take a minute but i want to make two points for clarity. one, i think it's a real shame that he didn't start that with i'm sorry which would have been the obvious human reaction that anyone would want from a leader in that situation. and i have a feeling he felt it. and i think it's, there is sometimes such an adversarial

relationship between, people under siege and people asking them the questions, but i wish he had done that. and i believe i want to believe that's what he felt. the second thing is i want to be clear that i do think that we need to adapt these platforms and the rules of how we use them much faster. it turns out when you own a voice you get terrible behavior from it. and it's easy in stories all these people to categorize, we as humans like the stories where people are either clearly the heroes of the villains and unfortunately is never the case there's good and evil and everybody and everything. but i do think we need to get, as you said people are dying, and we need to address that much faster with more seriousness than we have been. and i believe we can although i believe that's going to take work that we are not currently doing. but i think it's easy to talk about how people are dying and i think it's important to talk about how people are living, too. i grew up in the midwest in the

90s and early two thousand and i was sort of, not very good and i think without the internet, i will honestly say i don't think i would've made it through. that was transformative to me, the acceptance of people in the world and i think you can say that for many other groups who have been oppressed with no voice for long time. and i have no doubt that many people have lived because of facebook as well. >> i get that argument but it's how they are building the structure. nicole wong used to work for facebook she was a lawyer for them. we did an amazing interview where she talked about the pillars you build these things on. and originally for example the pillar for google was context, authenticity, authentic and something else. and you build it, you pick the choices you make to build the structure you are making. what facebook has been built on, and i'm just using this as the issue, is twitter is its own cesspool of meth.

today was really fun for some reason there was all kind of weird things on there. but you build it on certain things and so what facebook is built on is virality, speed and engagement and you build it on those premises and guess what you get? precisely what you get, you get fake news, you get hatred. if you build it around community, context, authentic connections, that's very different, but guess what, it's not as lucrative a business. >> i think it should deeply trouble everyone that these companies have teams of people that try to figure out how to exploit our systems. you get what you expect to get out of it. i do think though that there is more good than bad that comes from this. if i could push a button and make all of the face book products disappear i would. twitter, maybe. [ laughter ] and i joke about

that. i think the value that we have gotten and again we need to adapt, it happened much faster than i think human societies been able to doubt or so far we have been able to adapt to. i think there's incredible good, i think it's easy to get lost in the discussion so just based on your conversations. thinking of the future and you're talking to the people who are at the core of this. based on the conversations and you're reading the tea leaves, where do you see this going? are we on the edge of a precipice and is just going to get worse? or, are people really waking up to some of the issues with these tools and are taking real serious concrete steps to solving them? >> i wish i could say that but a lot of the stuff that comes out of facebook is we are the victims here. i've never seen this insane reaction. you know it's really interesting in context of the google people around the sexual harassment, the employees said wait a second that is not how we want to run a company. and the facebook employees are more, i call them docile, but

they are. they are docile, they must be stoma. [ laughter ] >> imagine that. >> from a book called 1984. [ laughter ] >> we are on television right now, kara ! we weren't allowed to read that! [ laughter ] >> i should run facebook because i have read 1984 and i know about the implications of dictatorships. i'm sorry, brave new world. [ laughter ] you're right, you're right. ninth-grade reread them all. we read them all. in any case, i'm sorry. what was your point? >> i don't know! >> is anything going to heaven? >> i think congress is going to insert itself and the fact that lindsey graham is going to have any say over this is

disturbing. [ laughter ] i think it's bad, these people in congress i spent a lot of time in washington visiting them. there are a few senators, senator warren, senator bennett, there's a couple that are pretty intelligent, senator wyden, you know them better than i do, congressman anybody? i'm just saying, i think we are going to get this resolved. >> i think we have actually lost sight of what's really important. i think we are living on exponential curve of technology and the rate of change has been increasing every year, every decade. it's going to keep changing and what we are in right now which feels like the most important and most difficult technological issue we will face will turn out to be nothing but a warm-up drill for the stuff we are going to be dealing within the next five, 10 years. and i think this seems like an absolute meltdown there can be nothing more important or nothing harder. we are going to look back at this with on this in the way that we look back at you

know, previous presidents now, remember when life was so simple? [ laughter ] the next round of issues are going to be like what does it mean when anyone can edit anyone else's gino? what does it mean when we have artificial intelligence which is smarter than humans in every way? these, i promise are going to make the issues of today look like trifles that we wish we had to deal with again. >> is ai robotic, the changes in transportation, things around genes and dna, things that are about to become to the edge are really frightening in terms of who determines these things and the impact it has on society. >> the thing that is always hard on exponential curve is when you look forward they look flat and when you look backwards they are curved. any kind only since your own relative pace of progress so it always feels like the most important thing ever, and that isn't always true. but if you don't look forward, if we get totally mired down in

the stuff that's happening right now and we miss these questions, that really get to fundamental questions about what is the future of humanity going to look like? what does it mean to be human? what is the world to look like in 30 years? which is going to be on recognizably different. i think that is what, i'm confident that we will adjust to current issues i don't am not sure we will be able to just a future ones. >> what is the chinese-driven internet look like? it's a really interesting world. >> lordy lordy. >> it's hard to think about because the surveillance stuff is coming, the sensors the stuff we put in our bodies, stuff like that it's going to be altering your own body. >> so you're speaking of packed house and also to the american public on c-span and you have opened up a i and you are both very involved in these questions. is there anything we can do right now, i mean other than just sit and wait for this technology to be developed and hope it doesn't destroy us?

what can we actually do? >> not watch a black mirror [ laughter ] >> actually i think sci-fi is really important to watch. [ laughter ] >> not to the pig one, i will never once that one. >> don't see that one. >> you in terms of what we can do, people can participate and get involved, kara talks about how you know tech companies leadership is overwhelmingly male and that's true. but the most skewed feel that i know right now is machine learning phd's which i think are like by graduation rates, 98 -99 percent men. and that is the group of men in my opinion that will have the most effect on the future of the world that we live in. and what we can do is get involved. we can encourage a much broader, much more diverse group of people to go to that

field and other fields as well. we can start conversations now before we are sort of reacting from the other side like we are now with how social media gets used. we can start conversations now about what decisions we can make what do we want society to look like before we make all these changes are we sure they are good? are we sure they are bad? which one should we try to stop? which ones should we do more? but i don't know how to do that because i think society is very good at reacting to yesterday's problems and very bad at investing huge amounts of time and energy and thought into the problems that will incur in 10 years. >> aren't you the person that supposed to be thinking? >> i'm trying to make that my major focus. that's why i'm not running for governor. >> i'm going to mark with you. >> the does not sound very fun. >> are you kidding? he is the most fun. elon is the most fun. >> okay we have now veered off

topic. [ laughter ] >> okay so i think it's time, yeah we are going to open up all these questions i just got a cramp in my leg, al. so here's how it's going to work. so we have a wireless mic and i'm going to point to you and then hand you the wireless mic. better to ask a specific question to one of the other soap you have a specific question for someone please let us know who it is and then please pass the mic back up we got one mic.:01. >> also, please say your name and stand up, first question is going to be over there so let's pass that mic over there. >> hi, my name is aurora and i'm doing work helping communities and organizations figure out how to definitively and effectively deal with sexual predators when they are

identified. with the possibility of applying restoring justice particularly for lower-level offenses or miscommunications, i'm curious to hear from those of you how you would like to see us shift. how we respond to accusations and then genes era. we haven't quite figured out as yet. >> how to take that one? [ laughter ] we are at an interesting point in the me to stuff there are still these astonishing stories i don't know if you read the les moonves one in the new york times today, you should it was disturbing. although it was kind of low level corruption on his part, the way he was trying to cover up in order to get the money that he wants. you know, it's a big question

because the stories go around the world so quickly, right? everything gets amplified and people get exhausted by the amount of discussion. and what's really critically important is that people, when women, especially women should have voices and be heard. the story should be heard and i think the one thing we did when we covered the ellen pao story, one of things we did one of things i did as an editor i decided to cover it like it was the super bowl and we had five stories a day on it. and we decided to just put a lot of attention on it and we had two reporters on it to great reporters. and we covered the out of it , we live-blogged , we did everything. we thought it was an important intersection of sexism and power and money and influence, stuff like that. so, one of the problem is that

you know when you have things like twitter or whatever, things just, it exhausts people. and so that it becomes noisy and then the real point, you can have a substantive discussion about problems. and everybody feels sort of in a crouched position and doesn't know what to do. and so legitimate stories, everyone just, man get like, i can't say anything, women now want to talk a lot and about it. but then there are so many different stories, and then you got the cable stations doing different things and then it becomes sort of a circus. it's really hard in this era not to be twitchy in terms of what you are doing. so it's really hard to know how you substantively make change. my feeling is again, the issue is the systems. the system is broke him in a way that it doesn't allow, it's broken against certain people that let certain people stay in power and those people like to stay in power and they're not

going to give it willingly. so how do you change the system at the very core is really a super difficult problem for my perspective? >> the area where i have the most expertise on this is not about sort of lower income, lower status women female founders in the portfolio and i think there is still a hugely long way to go there. and i think my new belief about how the problem is actually starting to get solved is the lps that give their money to invest. now that they have decided to demand reporting and transparency on this, i think that is the first time when i'm actually seeing the industry take this sufficiently seriously. i have sort of an unusual perspective on this whole thing, because i was both harassed as a founder 15 years ago and it's always stuck in my memory and i'm friends with a lot of powerful men in dc who are on the other side of this. so i feel i see both sides of

it now. at this point a very common complaint from female founders is that male vcs will not engage with them in anything other than a conference room during the day with the door open with people in there. and that is a huge disservice to women in technology. and how that gets fixed, i mean i hear about it, and i understand why people have the risk profile that they do, and then i see you'll be fine 99 percent of the time and people say what about that 1 percent? i'm not going to get risk. but the current state there, you know it's clearly better than women being harassed but is deeply unfair to women and i don't know how you turn that around. >> you know it's so funny because i've had people say that to me, what if somebody says anything? don't kiss them, don't ask a man on a date. i may go at list for you don't do these things. >> i'm on your side but

>> it such a vast overreaction by men. women don't go around doing this all day. we managed to control our saves cells, even though we want to grab you guys [ laughter ] well, i don't. but it's just, you know what i mean. when i hear that i literally want to take the glass and throw it. >> i am agreeing, i'm saying this is a huge problem. >> that's the first problem this is a systematic problem throughout society and maybe i am the cause. my son, who is 13 and a champion debater, and he's always, hegel's mom, what about men who could harassed? and i'm like what? >> let's talk about that, why? what about the other 99 percent? so we end up having these amazing debates about it but it's interesting how he goes there. like that is where he goes.

that's where the 99 percent, i don't send him to his room for that or anything [ laughter ] but it's interesting. i don't know how you just stop it. i don't know what else to say. >> we can continue or we can move to the next question, to the left, you have the mic. >> hi my name is jule stewart and this is for the mere forces. and i'm wondering about the real world. i think we don't interrogate enough is the real world impact with a lot of these tech platforms. not just in the sense of our these mass genocides that are caused by some unnamed technology platforms, but for example demographics of this room would not look the way without fair employment practices that companies that we live around. let's be real i live in san francisco and am i the only black person here? yeah, hey, okay, all right. [ laughter ] there are a few of

us but not probably 13 years ago. but in light of things like amazon going to long island city and the google experiment that they create a whole city, spoiler alert i'm an urban planner i'm really curious about this. and your take on how these platforms and companies wilting their employment power and economic power affect cities, and how you know, things can be a little bit different. it's very weird that employment patterns are reflected so heavily in cities. and, you know, you know what i mean. so i'm wondering what you think about it, thanks. >> that's a big question. i think what you're asking about is how we get, i believe how we get more diversity involved to create cities that

are more, less pushed apart by money, by race, by all kinds of things, correct? >> i'm wondering how do we connect those? [ inaudible question ] >> 100 percent. yeah, i think again it goes to this thoughtlessness, like how did this happen? and they act like it just happened and years ago i told the story, i wrote a story, i'm not a city planner, what's happening around cities has a lot to do with city planning. you know how segregation happens it's very clear. in this city it's about money, like who can afford to live here. and then who they hire who then can afford to live here. you don't see the connections

between things and connections are very hard for a lot of these people who run these companies to make. they really can't make connections of why this happens here, why the way hollywood people couldn't understand how how the depicted women reflected misogyny. it was claire danes or someone who was talking about what's her name's bikini? yes, natalie portman. >> someone is on twitter here. >> it was an interesting debate, jessica simpson, right she was just making a comment you should go look at it. i'm getting off the topic. but i think the way they hire, years ago i wrote a story called besides the men and the women on facebook i like to drop these things down it was the board of twitter, it was 10 white men the same age almost the same age, you could've just, i didn't know them all. and i called the ceo who was great, he's a great guy, and i

said how did you get 10 of the same exact same white man on the board? and he said i don't know it just happened. and i said it could just happened, that's mathematically impossible. so i wrote a story, and i believe i literally think i should have quit after i wrote this lead. i said the board of twitter, which has three peters and a dick. he thought it just happened that way. and it was fascinating to me. >> really? >> right, and he did it and other people did it when i went to question him, well you know, kara, we have standards , that's the word they used. it's really interesting that you use the word standards when it comes to adding women or people of color to a board. but you never do it when it's

10 white men who are by the way driving the company into a wall, just so you know, twitter's not doing very well. or yahoo or any of them. standards is only applied to people who are trying to get in, and it's really, it's that kind of stuff. so i do think these decisions are made purposely and they pretend, the unconscious bias is very conscious as far as i can tell. it's done with thoughtlessness. so there are thoughtful politicians it's a look, just call it out. you are going to put people of different economic and racial in different places throughout the city and everyone's going to do it. we've got to have leaders that do that and that's really i think the problem is they don't do that. and at these companies they've got have leaders that say i have 70 percent white guys running this place. i need to change this and i can't look at it like i'm dropping sanders. it can't be looked at like

that because that's the way they see it in their brain that it's a favor, rather than an asset. >> how do you solve city problems and racism? [ laughter ] >> hi, i also feel unqualified but i think the data is really clear that making housing affordable. >> yes. >> it's a hugely beneficial thing to people that are younger and disenfranchised and i think san francisco has had a catastrophic failure to do that. >> so we have a question to the right here, you and the white sweater. >> [ inaudible question ] [ laughter ] >> i, i wanted to kind of change the topic to sort of the politicization of data and who owns your data and we all subscribe to these social platforms, and who owns hours, and how they may change

antitrust laws or the definition? i'd like to hear both of your thoughts on that. >> thank you. i think you own your data and people agree on that. the hard part is the internet giants are just, their network or whatever coded word you want to use, you can pick if you all of your friends aren't instagram you're going to be on instagram. true ownership of data would mean that you know if you stop liking instagram's rule, you can go elsewhere and have a good experience. but you don't have an option to do that. and that is what the current consumer data protection laws and the antitrust laws and just more general consumer protection laws failed to take into account is that like people say, if you don't like pace facebook just don't use facebook's products, much easier said than done. and sure, you can do it, and

some people do but does anyone in this room not use any facebook product at least once a week? none? >> i feel like i have tried multiple times and i have turned my phone to black-and- white, i really try to get off and i actually kimberly cannot do it. >> facebook is a bloated app. >> but you don't use instagram? >> instagram is a museum for people who perform. [ laughter ] >> but you use it, honey, don't you? >> no, i'm not on instagram. [ inaudible question ] >> how do we actually have

consumers in a world like there are these monopolies? what's the answer to that? >> i think they are going to be broken up. >> i think the amount of data that these companies have on you and how they collected is, >> so what does that mean? >> i don't know, they done it before. i think probably that's where it's going to go. if i had to guess is very similar to what everyone said, who can affect microsoft and then bingo, they affected microsoft. so i think there is going to be some sort of leap because these companies can't resist, there tendencies to want to suck up the every piece of information. >> i think it's the democrats,

if they get empowered who used to be friends of tech they are not so friendly to take anymore can tell you from visiting them. you've got a lot of people in the democratic party who now who are pretty post about what happened and had some thoughts on that. >> okay we have a question all the way in the back yes, you, i know you are surprised but all the way in the back. do you want to just get up and project? >> yeah, let's do that, just your name. >> [ inaudible question ] >> so say this extremely i can't promise when, i can even make a competent prediction.

but we, humanity will at some point will build digital intelligence that will surpass artificial intelligence. people don't think about that much because it's so hard to say, it's just really hard to see what the world looks like on the other side. i think it really matters that is built in a way that benefits and is distributed widely throughout humanity and the decisions about how we use it and build it are distributed to humanity. not to make this a commercial about open ai but i really think that's super important. i think we will be able to learn the collective human value system. i think there will be big arguments about what human values we should keep and what we should let go and who gets to decide that and how we vote on it. it will be in some sense the hardest problem humanity has ever faced. but i now believe in a way that i didn't used to, or i at least not to use be as confident but how we build an ai , that

shares human values and is aligned with the goals of humanity i think that's technically possible. so that's the good news. the bad news is i think the collective governance problem is going to be superhard. and i think as we were saying earlier, society is just evolutionary forward, i think we are going to have to react to this at a speed that we are not good at, which is why i think it's important that the technology industry now try to get people thinking about this. and try to figure out the world that we want to collectively live in. >> but who controls, who has hired most of the ai, the machine learning, where the two companies that control most of it now? >> one of the things that is cool about this, >> but the two companies that are really hiring heavily is google and facebook. >> one of the things that is

magical is software. if you have people that are like a little bit smarter or a little bit better at planning.