and thanks to.

all right. now we're going to get started. thanks, everybody, so much for coming tonight. think it's finally fall? it's super cold. thanks, everyone. standing in line, we at capacity tonight. so. 200 people in here right now. tonight. thank you for being among them and for coming out this our last responsible tech mixer of 2024. so we want to make it a really good one. we're glad you're here to celebrate this moment with us. so i'm rebecca tweed. i'm the executive director here at all. tech is human for those of you who don't know our organization, we are a responsible technology nonprofit. we're building the world's

largest multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary network in responsible technology. we are 50,000 people at this point across 101 countries. and we are building and strengthening the responsible technology ecosystem and the way we do that is through multi stakeholder convenings like this one. so thank you for being here. we also do this through multi-discipline education and resource development. so if you go to all tech us human dot org, you'll find tons of resources topics like responsible ai, trust and safety, public interest, technology and more and. then the third way that we try to strengthen this is through a responsible tech career development workstream through that workstream we have a program that i want to tell you about tonight. i have kind of two things i want to plug while i'm up here. and the first is our mentorship program. how many of you have participated in our mentorship program in the past?

awesome. okay. yeah, we do have a handful of people here tonight. this is going to be our sixth cohort. we've had 1000 people go through the program. we have one problem, though. our current waitlist is at 1600 people to get into to this next cohort in 2025. we don't have enough mentor to help support the number of people who want to get into responsible technology. so i want to put a call out tonight if any of you have experience in responsible technology are working in the field right now for any duration of time, we would love to have you apply to be a mentor if you want to give back. this is a great way to bring new people into the field and obviously there's a hunger to get into this space if are interested in doing that. we do scattered around the room. we have a qr code and we have the mentor application directly on that qr code. the second thing i want to tell you about tonight, how many of you have heard of dr. joy or joy ball and many, quite a few of

you. yeah, she's fantastic. we are lucky enough to have an ama with her this coming tuesday. she's celebrating the paperback release of her book unmasking ii. so i'll be moderating a conversation with her. it's and we you'll want to pick up the preorder the version but all tech is human has a 100 spots to to allow you to get in even if you don't the paperback version so let's say you got the hard copy maybe you got the audiobook and like to ask her a question. if you go to that qr code, you can find a direct link to get into the ama on tuesday. so that's at 6 p.m. and it's going to be a great conversation. so thanks again for coming. we have a lot of incredible things in store for, so i'm going to hand off to my colleague, the associate director of all tech us human sandra khalil.

thank you so much. rebecca. hi, how are you feeling today? it's a packed house that'll keep us nice and warm. it's nice and chilly outside. so hope you all are well. crazy times we're in. i wanted to just say a few remarks following rebecca's intro. it's truly inspiring to. see so many familiar faces here and see some new ones as well. we're not only gathered to celebrate the release of tech agnostic by greg epstein, but we're also kind of recommitting our shared commitment of creating a more responsible, ethical approach to technology. the theme tonight congregation tech agnostic kind of takes that spiritual approach to technology and why we need a reformation. all tech is human is a chapter towards the end. greg was sharing with julia

angwin how took his confession. i didn't know i did that. okay. so it's we're obviously in an era where our interactions are often filtered technology and this space for me really reminds us how essential it is to gather, to connect, to to reaffirm our commitment to a tech space and make sure technology serves us all. greg's book also challenges us to rethink our relationship to technology, and it invites us to kind of move beyond neutrality and think about a space where there's commitment and active movement towards a more responsive tech future. we want this space to be a place where we can question, redefine and shape the impact of the technology on our communities. so that's exactly what we're here to do this evening.

be in community with one another. we're to celebrate not only greg's book and its success, but also collective impact that we can have. we come together. it's easy to feel isolated in this technological world, and especially the folks who are maybe in the industry and looking to do more responsible tech work. this is why gatherings like these are really powerful and impactful show that we're not alone in this. we're part of a broader community, one that values accountability, the empathy, justice. and we're going to continue on this very important front. so meet each other tonight. i encourage you all to network and think about the change that we can make collectively in this difficult time. make conversation with each other. connections, collaborations. and know that that's the foundation, the responsible tech movement that we are in of you for.

so enjoy tonight and allow me to bring up our founder, david ryan polgar. thank you. let's keep it going for sandra khalil. all right. raise your hand. you. if you know sandra, raise your hand right. cassandra i think embodies the heart and soul of all tech. us human. and i know on on a cold day like this like going on a lot of turmoil in the world in the country. a lot of you probably felt staying underneath the covers, getting comfortable watching some some netflix chilling with her cat, you know, just hanging out. but we're and we're here because of people like like sandra and, people like yourself from all different backgrounds, all different. we're actually coming together to do the hard work right. we're in the meatpacking district. there's lots of fancy clubs. taylor swift might be next door

to catch. right. truly. wow. well, they did the snl party there, i think that did happen. but the point is, what is different, right? we're actually looking at struggle and we're going head first towards it. but the reason why i mentioned somebody like like sandra and kind of embodying the ethos in rebecca is what's different about it is when we have 200 people who are gathered here. right. the is that instead of closing off in conversation. well you're notice that like sandra and rebecca do is when somebody is kind of walking in because again, you came here out of the cold, maybe maybe you don't know anybody. maybe you just heard about this responsible tech movement. maybe you just heard about all tech is human. you're like, what the heck is this? what kind of unusual name? maybe i'll check it out. right? but to human is also to be kind

of nervous and to have your own kind of anxieties and to wonder if somebody wanders and you right. that's a lot of what we're doing here is recognizing that our tech future is not coming down from the heavens. that's why we have our humanist chaplain, greg epstein, author of tech agnostic. instead, it's deriving what we are doing in moments like this. but the part that i want to point out that's important, that's very subtle right. i'm a kind of guy who notices subtleties in life. the difference when you approach like sandra or rebecca and you might not know, know them what they do. it's a little two step right. it's not a dance move. i don't know. a lot of dance. sure. if i've had a martini, maybe i'll do the robot. right. but you don't need. any kind of rhythm for this. it's a subtle move where.

instead of closing off and saying, hey, i'm in conversation with this person, go do your own thing. hey, who are you what brought you here? right. that is a subtle difference. but it's really important in moments like this when we realize that we haven't found ourselves in the. but it sure as hell like we're in the splinter verse where people all different versions of reality and we're struggling for a shared reality. we're saying how does somebody view the world? so different from me? it's like the dress the famous dress. you see a different color and you're wondering, why does somebody see blue or something green? and you realize, well, we're all on the same blue marble together. but we have the subtle difference of color based on our own experience. so i think one of the challenges when we talk about responsible technology is that our tech

future alters how we live, love, learn, even die. right. it alters how we see the world. and i think that's why people are coming to gatherings this it's recognized and that's not about technology it's about our lives it's about our future it's about our friends future, our our loved ones future. that is important. so the moment that i want to kind mention is after we're done after you hear julia angwin and greg epstein have this conversation, we've got another hour together, right? we've got these moments where you can actually say what brought you here? what's your motivation? right. what perspective do you have. and how is that different than mine? because this isn't about an individ ual pursuit. this is about collectively understanding one another involving one another and coming with a collective co design of

what our better tech future looks like. before, bring up greg and julia, i'll just read off a little piece. i saw greg wrote this. it's also a prolific writer, just has a piece out in time. and this i shows you why we're simpatico, right? we always talk about an agnostic space. he's talking about tech agnostic. here's one of the lines that really spoke to me and maybe it will speak to you as well. he ends the piece saying, we are not digital beings, we are not chat bots, optimize for achievement and sent to conquer this country and then colonize the stars through infinite data accumulation. we are human beings who care deeply about one another because we care about ourselves. our very as people capable of loving and loved is what makes

us worthy of the space we occupy here in this country. on this planet, and on any other planet we may occupy someday. right. the idea is that, like we've talked about, where human we're flawed, we have different perspectives. that's important to know because we're all in this together. and the challenge is to understand one another. so without further ado, love to bring on our fireside chat for today. but again, connect with one another. use the shared document that i sent out an email two days ago about you'll see a bunch of qr codes throughout the today, right? learn from one another, challenge one another, share ideas. come a startup's new non-profits. that's what this is about. all tech is human is a launching pad for the new thing, for the new ideas, for the new

communities. so without further ado, let's bring up greg epstein and julia angwin. hi. great to see you. hello, everyone. this is very exciting. i love that you all got out of bed. i actually wasn't an it is watching. i'm chilling and pounding gummy bears which has become my comfort food in these difficult times. all need one. i'm so i is my distinct pleasure interview greg about his fantasy aztec book. i want to say just a sentence about like what it meant to me. you know, i grew up in palo, in

silicon valley in the early days of when it the personal computer revolution. and i was just steeped the technology world in the early days. and i don't think i realized it was a religion, but reading this book made me understand how it was a religion that i knew that i grew up in a sort something and that then i had to then unlearn that something but i didn't have words for it. and greg put all the words around it that it was just so beautiful for me because it helped see all the pieces. so i'm really excited to share with you all, all the great insights, but thought we should just start with a little bit about you, greg. you describe yourself as a professional atheist and a tech agnostic. and and you work as a humanist, so can you help us understand

what that what does that all mean? yes, i think i can. although can i just acknowledge that the room for a second. is that okay? i just want to say. so it's skipping ahead just a little bit, but i have to say hi to you. and just to say that i was here for one of these events a couple of years ago. it was douglas rushkoff, an and i was blown away by community. it's in the book in chapter eight, the last chapter before the conclusion and. and it was i wrote about this organization as the the congregation, the tech responsibility, tech ethics of the tech religion. and but i was really i was convinced that it was it couldn't be that crowded all the time like it must have been just for rushkoff. and so to be here and get a chance to talk to you myself and have it look the same, it's it's a testament to the organization

and the organizing that they're doing. all tech is human. and it also speaks to the fact that they're very aware that there are people like you who really, really do to talk about this and want to work on it so i just applause for me. first and also now as now, they've been deemed a congregation, they'll be baptism. you'll be doing. yes, i will. i will baptize a. cell phones, all that for a fee so yes, i humanist. which means chaplains are sort of the history of it is that we're advisors except i'm non-religious. i'm an atheist myself. unless you want to get really philosophic about it and call me an agnostic, the term i prefer is humanist. humanist is is a reference to what i positively believe. what i do stand for, what?

where i do get my ethics, my my sense of wanting to live a meaningful life and build a better world for. and it comes from the fact that i'm human that i'm only human. i'm, you know, we all are in my belief collections of billions or trillions really of interconnected. every single one of which is product of exploded stars billions of years ago. and we are although we're in my belief, not given a purpose from, heaven or anywhere else. you know, we're what carl sagan talked about as the universe coming to know itself. and that something that i learned about when i was about 23, after having majored in religion in chinese. and i thought i was going to do be a buddhist priest or something like that. and it just it just really hit me and been my whole life ever since then. and i'm lucky enough to have this at harvard and now at mit as well, where, you know, i

advise people not to tell them what to do with their life. i mean, you know i wouldn't be qualified. i don't think anybody should. but help people figure out if they're not religious and they don't, that there's some sort of divine plan for them. who do they want to be and how do they want live? awesome. so tell us. tech as a religion. you know, this book is interesting because he has real comparisons for everything. know what is the comparison for heaven? and we'll get into all of those. but i want to just start with kind of a flippant question because you talk about the practice of tech and, how it's religious. so my question is, who's jesus? well, first of all, it's got be adam neumann, right. the founder of we work because he looks the most like doesn't he and by the way that is how you get soft billions like you have the more you look and seem

like whatever jesus should be to the founders of softbank the more billions shall get. and is that not accurate? it seems accurate. all right. so, so but really the answer then would it depends. jesus, you're talking about. okay, because what there's a couple billion christians the world. right. but they don't all have same definition of jesus. they don't all have the same vision of jesus. they certainly don't have the whole the all same theology of jesus. right. some people you may have noticed from previous remarks a minute ago that i am not a christian, but, you know, some people are christian in ways that really terrify me and make me angry. but some people are christian ways that inspire me and, make me want to be a better human myself. and some people are kind of in between, which is where a lot of us are. i and so, you know, who's jesus

in the tech religion? well, it depends which jesus we're talking about. doesn't it. the good one, the bad one. oh, the good one. the bad one. yeah, i mean, the bad one. you know, there are a lot of people in the tech world who are trying to control us. right. not, you know, maybe because they're like the stereotype dr. doom or thanos. like he's right. it's not necessarily that even my friend chris gilliard, who's in the book, as you know, chris, hyper visible gilliard talks about silicon valley supervillains. and even he points out that. the supervillains in comic books, they believe that it's for the good, that they'll conquer the world right. and so you know the the the jesus figures, the bad jesus kind, you know, they really believe that it's for the good

that. they get all the billions. it's what i would call a digital puritanism where, you know, there's this belief like puritans had this belief that you intellect and, you were, of course, going to the best possible heaven and everybody else was going to fire and brimstone hell. and there was nothing you could do to change fate. you could only do the protestant work ethic to show everybody. of course, the little lead. i mean, why wouldn't i right me? you may not be, but so there was that, but now we have this belief of like, well, it's kind of similar here and you could say, well, yeah, it's similar, except we don't a literal heaven and a literal hell, but we kind of do. yeah i'm going to skip to my question on the heaven and hell. that's all right, because there's you write that at this quote, i felt like just was so you write texts focus on

predicting future opportunities for profit rather than reckoning with the ethical challenges of the present. can resemble religious tendencies to distract from earthly problems and focus on heaven and i just felt like after we've had these two years of debating whether should we be worried about it. i destroying the planet in the future. you know taking over human life or a bunch of people arguing like actually can we just focus on the actual problems that are happening on the ground and those people being mostly dismissed. i hadn't put in the heaven and hell context before, but it did seem very similar. yeah, julia. i mean, i didn't start out planning to make heaven and hell comparison, you know, compare ideas or faith. faith in the tech world. things like heaven and hell, but

just reading the literature, you know, sort of tending the meetings and being the world of tech people, i people it just, it struck me. so, first of all, just the basics there is a belief that is pretty widespread. the tech world, i don't know how familiar here is with it. i assume there's a mix, but you guys are probably fairly knowledgeable about this. it's called long termism. and you know, the idea is that at some point maybe millions of years in the future there's going to be trillions of digital beings uploaded into the you know, i guess it'll be powered by the power of distant stars and, you know, that that's that's what we're going to that's we're going to have and what would i about this?

well, people who are interested in long term realism are always saying what do we owe the future that's their line. what do we owe to those future, which is their needs override, our current needs. right. and i feel like that's very if i thought of it until i read your book. but it's very similar to heaven issue, right. which is like what do we owe to this heavenly thing as to like what are we focusing on on the ground here. yeah. and so the idea is that. we don't want to focus on the present, you know, making the world better in the present because. we meaning the sort of the tech leaders, the tech overlords that i'm referring to in these early chapters of the book because, you know, we're not really able to make the present better. they aren't, you know. so what will happen in religion in the sort of history of ancient religion, which i had a

chance to study for many years is, you know people will go to the ruler and they'll say, well, it's not looking so good out there. it's not fair. it's not just it's dirty it's violent. you know, there's no security for family. you know, you're oppressing, fix it. and the ruler either can't fix it or doesn't want fix it or some combination thereof. and so, you know, the way to get around is to say, well, i have a plan for it's going to, you know, in the distant future if you obey what i you to do, if you if you believe in what i want you to believe that you're going to get to the place where it's going to be perfect and beautiful and wonderful. all you have to do, do what i say. and by the way, if you don't do that, then you go the other place, right? and it's honestly just very,

very similar to the thinking. a lot of what we call this sort of mythological place called silicon valley. right. there's there's no physical territory of silicon valley. it's a myth. right. but it's better understood, i think, as a religion, because, you know, if i told you there's this myth and, you know, there's this guy zuse, hera and achilles and, you know, they really want us to do stuff. it's, you know, they've got a certain agenda. i mean nobody here would take anything like that seriously. of course you wouldn't. but if i. you well, there's this religion and, you know, you're expected to believe in it. and it has, you know, millions, maybe billions of members and it has an agenda for all of us. and we need to follow that agenda. and if we don't, there will be punished. well, first of all, you'd be very familiar with that way of thinking. second of all, you might be pretty afraid because you've seen that that kind of thinking

can have real world impact, can it not? and so it did remind me of as i was reading about these ideas elegies, the long termism, and then flip side of it, we do the flipside the hell yeah, let's to hell so so hell hell. so in a.i. discourse there is this idea, you know, again, many of you very familiar probably called x risk or existential risk. and what refers to is the idea that according to a range of a.i. philosophers who've been surveyed for this and, you know, this appears in a book by, a guy named toby ord, who is this sort of leading philosopher, one of the leading philosophers, is a competition for that, i guess, of the affective altruist movement, which is a movement that's backed by many, many tech billionaires, some of whom are not even in jail yet. and and they in the running for

bad jesus sam bankman-fried was growing his hair out. he was really i mean he was he was dressing like a modern day jesus. and now he's in jail with he he i mean, i actually think that might qualify him so anyway so existential risk we're and this by way on the website. 80000 hours which is the career advice thing website of a career advising and philanthropically advising movement. i'm being charitable here i hope that called effective altruism altruism if you're told if you go to that movement which is again is backed heavily by many, many billionaires, you're told the number one problem that a young person should work on in the world is the problem of

online or runaway or essentially evil a.i. that's the number one problem in the world climate, not nuclear, not, you know. democracy, not peace, not justice, runaway a.i., right and you're told that, because they say there is a 10% chance it's now, how exactly did they calculate this right now? what about 9.5%? 10% chance that runaway or unaligned or evil a.i. will eliminate, destroy, will kill all human beings within the next 100 years. right? so hell write apocalypse calamity and the idea is it's time this is not just a random prediction. they want you to do stuff for them, right? the idea is follow our approach

to a.i., which in many cases does involve investing trillions of dollars in immediately. thank you, sam altman. or you will go to hell the bad the bad place. another comparison to religion is, of course we've got to talk about god. so when i first started writing about privacy it was about 2009. i was at the wall street journal and i went into my editors and i was like, you know, there's all this like, stuff tracking you across internet. and they were like, no way. what? and i was like, i'm going to do some stories about. and so i wrote a bunch of stories and then i remember my editor called, me into his office one day and he said, you know, i'm just i'm feeling like they know all these things because my series was called

what they know and it was all about all these things they know about you and he was like, i think we're talking about his god. and i was like, what? and and he was like, yeah, god knows everything. so now they've invented god. and i was like, i'm you can look at it that way, but that's not how seeing it. but i have noticed in the years since i've been writing about privacy that there are a lot of people who feel that same benevolence about surveillance because they feel they're being seen and maybe they're having been seen, truly seen people in their lives. and so i am curious how you see god in this in this religious parable it surveillance or is it just google or is it the blockchain? i love it. i love so much about what you're just saying because, you know, you and i come from know somewhat similar backgrounds, not the same background, but but you know, somewhat parallel and i think we both grew up maybe

with like liberal understandings of jewish god. yeah. and, and so it was kind of ineffable and mysterious and it was the sort of thing that you didn't really have to believe in. but but nonetheless, it's sort of present with us in our imagination, right so. all right. so so god, i mean, first of all, i had people tell me the beginning of my research for this book. i researched for six years. i went all over the valley world. i wrote for techcrunch, i did 200 interviews, that sort of thing but i had people tell me at the beginning and i. sort of worried about the beginning at the well, you know, it doesn't i mean, it's like a religion but it doesn't have they would always have like an x ray. they would it's like religion. i guess i could see some points that you're making but it doesn't have x. and i kept finding that extras really right there. and so one of the things that they would do that is god doesn't really have a gut.

0mg there is so much discourse about tech god in really mainstream circles. and i mean, i don't even know which examples to cite for you. you know, i could cite this religion called way of the future, which is started by this guy, anthony levandowski, who made over $100 million as a self-driving car engineer for uber and google. then he got convicted for stealing trade secrets and trump had to pardon right before he went to jail on the last day. the trump administration. but i digress. he he invents this religion another bad jesus. yes. yeah, he by the way, these people, they're not the actual god. they're all the prophet, right? like paul was the marketing guy for jesus. and, you know, again, you're a devout christian. you're really sincere. you know, take that with a grain of salt, obviously, like i you, paul, can be the marketing guy for jesus, you know, in a good way to.

but in this case, yeah we're talking about the bad one, i guess. and so, you know, so levandowski has this religion. he files the paperwork for, you know, with the united states government and he says the is called way of the future. and it is the worship of ai because ai is about to become god. and when it does, he says for all intents and purposes, a god. right? but says worship. because when it comes online, the god, it will be angry that we did not worship it sooner. right. so it's the jealous god of the old testament. okay, so there's that. and then there's another example that's fun. so there's this other book called snake oil by these two princeton scholars of ai arvin scieszka, poor. and you know, it's a good book. it's princeton press and it's you know what i can do? what it can't do. realistic. but they've got this article and popular substack that that sort

of advertises the book and they had one of the article two recent one is essentially a.i. companies have pivoted from building gods, from building god to creating products. so good, right. but but you know, little analysis here, a little biblical criticism. you know, if you have to pivot from building a god, there must be a lot of god building going on at some point. right. and so i could go on and on and don't worry, the book does chapter two. but yeah. you know, the point, though, and this isn't even addressing your question, which is about surveillance gods. so let me just do a second on that. right. so so surveillance. yes what is it? but a force that is literally in sky all us now that looks on us,

sees, sees our every movement increasingly hears our every breath, feels our every pulse. when i'm sleeping in my sleep number bed, it literally feels my every breath right. and it's constantly judging you. it knows you like god. it knows when you've been naughty, it knows when you've been nice it when you've been bad or good or be good goodness, right? it's it's this idea that. yeah. that, that god is it's watching you. so that your behavior will correspond to what, what it ought to. and that's the traditional religion in many cases. it's the tech religion. in many cases cases. i do want to say just i feel we're being a little bit mean about god and jesus here. and i do want say, yeah, so i mean, jesus.

well, i just want to say jesus like actually was like actually wanted to help the poor like he was as far as i understand the reading of it all. so i just wanted to throw in a little line here. well, let me let's let's take on for a second. i think that's very important julia, because, again, religion to me is a mixed. both in the sense that it has different aspect to it. like you, it has different communities, right? so some religious communities do something very different with their christianity, their their hinduism, their buddhism and by the way, atheist and humanist communities which i've led and participated in are very much like this too. you've some communities of atheists and who do a lot of good stuff and you've got others that will take you down weird rabbit holes. in fact, many of those are the secular tech people i talk in the book about how.

i had been to, you know, thousands of meetings of the secular, humanist, non-religious agnostic community. and then i started going to tech meetings after, you know, when i started researching this book and i realized, oh, these meetings tend to be more secular than the atheist i go to be. you know, there's no industry in the world, and i do call it a religion, not an industry, but there's no there's no entity in the world that's more as i've found, than valley. so anyway, my point is just that even within a given religious tradition, there's so much variation. and i really do mean that i've learned a lot of the best things in my life. i learned to try to fight for in the tech world in many cases from good, decent, thoughtful, honest wise, religious people

who learn humility from their god and from their congregations who learn honesty, integrity and you know, and they teach it and they preach it. and so i just want to, you know, make clear and i do try to get at that in the reformation sections of the book because we're going to get to. yeah, you know, i just just want to know like at least a third, if not more like half. the book in my heart is the opposite of alternative to the bad parts of the tech religion. it's not. it's all just me complaining and doing comedy routines about about how ridiculous some of stuff is. okay, we will get to it. but i we just have to do little bit more bad. i'm sorry. sure. and then we'll get the reformation starts for the book starts that for sure. because i think the part that another part that really was just a little bit too close to home was how you describe the rituals and practices tech. this is what he writes daily

prayers pale in comparison to the influence of the almighty screen to which the average american now genuflect close to 200 times per day day. you talk a little bit about how this compares to durkheim description of the collective effervescence of religious rituals. you also talk about your own struggles with tech addiction. i started to feel like i didn't know what the was between addiction and religious practice and then i had lost myself in marks with religion as the opiate of the masses. so i'm literally reading this off of a screen here now. so i absolve you. thank you. it put in the transcript that that was a joke. but yes, first of all, so the first section of the book, the

first like hundred pages or so is beliefs because a big part of religion is what we believe. but the second hundred pages the book in this i knew even before i wrote it had to be practices. religions are more than beliefs their beliefs and practices and communities as well. but we'll get to in a bit. and so so what are practices first of all the first chapter in this is i call it hierarchies. at first i was thinking of calling it caste out, you know, which is the the indian religious practice of, you know, hierarchical system in some people are, you know, closer god than others. and, you know, some people, the priestly caste, you know, highest caste and some people literally can't be touched. right. there's so lowly and i thought, you know, thought about doing that. i thought, oh, that's an apt comparison but you know, i do want to make the point, though,

that i decided i couldn't do that comparison because it was over the top. it was hyperbolic, like there's only couple of things. isabel wilkerson. wilkerson the wonderful african-american, you know, history. writes in her book caste, that, you know, really it's mainly the indian system. and then american racism that qualify as and i didn't want to, you know, go against her on that because, you know, it's not the tech world has many many flaws, but it's not at that level. it's not that bad. honestly, even at its worst. so i thought, okay, but it does have hierarchies, all religions in some or another have hierarchies like in orthodox judaism. you know, if you wake up in the morning, you, you're a man before, you're allowed to do almost anything.

you have to say a set of prayers that involves thanking god for not making you a woman right. so that's an example of hierarchy in religion. and as many of you know, it's very and it there are hierarchies that are at least to that in the tech world. i could go on there, but i mean, maybe i'll i'll save that. the the practice that i about is the spiritual practice that religions are, you know, very deeply composed, you know, i think even more so than than any kind of beliefs of these little moments, whether it's moments in a day, moments in a week, moments in a month, moments in a year, moments in a lifetime where. you know, it's a special set aside moment where we're supposed to acknowledge what's, you know, what whatever the higher is right. and oh, boy, tech, religion, its

rituals. right that that oh, i left my phone in the in the green room. isn't that nice? do you ever the chance to get away from your phone any more. know like, ritual differences, the genuflect. no, you know, it's so there you know there really is that that sense that the stained glass black mirror right but i guess what i want to say and this is sort of a hopeful thing is, how were you saying it? you were you were saying you know, you're looking at the the phone right. and you it was what that you know, you're you know, you're sort of apologizing for looking at your phone. and we talking about this before. and i, you know, what i thought to say was, no, i've i've had a change of heart based on the research that i did for this book, where first i was thinking

my own tech addiction. i was i research this and wrote about it in my 2910 book good without god because i was writing that book as a as young person, young writer. and i was really scared. i felt like i was, you know, i had a book contract and i wanted to show my late dad, who was already long dead that point. i wanted to show him that i could i could be successful. and i was just so scared that i wasn't going to be and that if i wasn't successful, then i was and less than nothing. and it was basically my own private hell. and it was such an overwhelming negative feeling that i sought escape. but like i'm not really a drug person or an alcohol person. i'm kind of like too scared to do that stuff. either. so the escape was my tech is

just like being on the phone, you know, first the palm pilot trio. so, you know, then it was the iphone, it was the laptop. it was just like toggling back and forth between the new york times dot com espn and you know and i was i, i was so sure that i was addicted that i literally went and sought formal addiction recovery and i write this in tech agnostic too. i went to something called smart, which is an alternative to 12 step methods. you know, without the, you know, it doesn't have the the higher power stuff. instead it's created by scientists, medical school professors. so i went to their meetings and i explained like i'm addicted to my tech and they laugh. they laugh their -- off at me. but they also said, yeah, i kind of get that kind of get that. researching this book, though,

i'm i realized like, okay but if it's an addiction, you can't go cold turkey, right? like, what am i going to do tell you that you can never use tech again because you're too addicted? what am i going to do? tell my students that. tell my kids that? i mean, the ship has sailed. and so i realized as i was writing the book that i had to talk to eating disorder experts because it's like an eating disorder, much more than it is an addiction with an eating disorder. you can't you can't stop eating the food. and moreover you can't even have like a negative relationship with the food where you think i'm eating this food right now. but i hate myself for it. no, no, don't do that. it's you transform, your relationship and the thing that the eating disorder experts that i spoke to for this did to really cure me. i mean, really help me in a deep, deep way. i hope you can take with you as well in that it's chapter five

on ritual is instead of. instead of fear as your motivator right i'm eating this food or not eating it because i'm afraid i need to look a certain way. i'm afraid if i don't look a certain everyone will hate me, will think i'm nothing, etc. i'm posting this instagram post or i'm starting this startup because i feel worthless and unless i'm really successful or really or whatever, i'll feel like everybody hates me and everybody, you know, i'm worthless and i'm in hell my own private hell. instead of that, you go to hope, right? i'm this food because it's going to nourish me, because i love the people love and it's going to help me to connect with them, but to eat with them or it's going to make healthy. so i can do the activities that i love and do even more of them or live longer to see my kids or my grandkids or whatever.

right. and with the tech, it's the hope of i, i want to connect with people. and sometimes that's going to be on a screen and that's okay. so i'm going to try to connect with people. i want to do good work. and so i'm, you know, i'm going to try to do good work on the screen. i to i want to get my message out. so i'm going to try to online, you know, that's the hope. and so no, i don't i don't really feel like we need to worry about, you know, if you're going to read your screen read your screen, enjoy it, just be mindful about it. yeah. yeah. i mean, you know, go for the hope, not the fear. okay, well, we have to up. but i want you. i barely gave us time for the positive view. so tell us how we're going to break the hold of this religion and find new humanistic future with without going through the protestant reformation, which, as i recall, was rather bloody. yeah it's not saying that we need to. i do talk about martin luther, but. but it's not.

but it luther rather. but it's not. that kind of reformation. in fact, it's probably closer to the reform judaism or reform islam or buddhism. these things all exist the less bloody reformation, bloody more ideas based reformations. right? but here's the thing. and it's okay that we're skipping this a bit because. i, you know, i do kind of want people to read the book, but i this community is featured in one of my reformation chapters, not the chapter on the heretics and the apostates love that chapter. please read that. not the chapter. even on people building the positive alternative on the chapter on the congregation. the idea that if religion didn't have congregations, nobody would care about religion, nobody would care like if it was just all isolated ideas and, you

know, little rituals that you're supposed to do on your own. and it wasn't about connecting with other people to help you live your life. nobody care. and i honestly think tech tech responsibility is very similar that like if we're going to try to make tech more responsible, more ethical, without actually people and bringing them together some form congregational thing, it's going to be very difficult and. so speaking of, i try to go in the on all tech is human to a difficult place where david rebecca sandra all of you mean i love you i love the work that you're doing and and i try to hold you accountable in that chapter and wonder out loud like this organization is getting big. what's it going to do with money? where's it going to get the money from? who's it going to be beholden to? but i'm doing from within your

congregation like i'm a card carrying member of whatever this is. i just want you to do it right, because care and so do all of us. and you know. and so do you. i, i came to believe that i mean, we're still going to hold you accountable, but i really believe that. and so so that's that's the message is like there really is a lot that we can do to make tech better than it is better than the sort of jokey stuff that we were talking about before. that's all too serious, honestly, because it has trillions of dollars and democracy's worth of implications, but there much that we can do impact it for the better to steer towards its better angels. if we do it together. and that's it's so exciting and fun and and really an honor for me to be saying so in this

space. well, that was a perfect ending. he was not, i believe, paid. thank you all so much. all right. let's keep it going for and greg. and you can continue. to be in conversation with greg epstein julia. greg will be signing all the copies of tech agnostic that gave out today. he's going to be over here to my left. so if you have your copy, talk to greg get it signed. we're here 830. so let's talk to one another. let's have that congregation. let's find the ways to collaborate and co-create that better tech future together. we're here 830. we're also going to see some information on the screen behind. me if you want to give ways to improve our tech as human, some feedback that you might have and if you want to stay after we get kicked out at 830, bunch of us

go two blocks down to the brass monkey, we continue the conversation about all the ways we can work together. so thank you and let's enjoy the rest of your night. thank