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tv   Press Here  NBC  September 8, 2019 9:00am-9:30am PDT

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this week, car makers and government regulators steer towards a future without driver controls. is it safer to get rid of the steering wheel? automated driving expert jamie carlson and meet bart myer who wants all of us to speak nicely to each other on the internet. plus, could you live forever and would you want to? our reporters martin giles from m.i.t. technology review and john swart of dow jones this week on press here. good morning. there is a push by car makers to
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take the steering wheel out of self-driving cars and the brake pedal and everything else. this is not a insane as it sounds. the thing b about an autonomous car is if it's working properly, the driver has nothing to drive. at in turn means the human behind the wheel is probably not paying enough attention to cake control if that became necessary. bottom line say engineers say if you're going to drive, fine. grab b the wheel, look out the window and drive. if you're not going to drive, if you're going to sort of monitor the situation and let the car do the work then let the r car do the work. the theory is the driver becomes a liability not an asset in this situation. jimmy carl son is one of the world's leading experts on self-driving cars. he's workeded at tesla, curiously at apple as well. and is now the vice president of out information at neo, a chinese car company. chinese answer to tesla. one of china's most legitimate
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challengers. we'll get to neo in a moment, but let's start with the question about self-driving cars. joined by martin at m.i.t, john of dow jones. what is neo's position on this? is this remove all of the stuff out of the dash or is is it keep it in this? >> well, there comes a time when you need to remoove move the safety driver. we believe in building a technology where we want to have a fully self-driving car. so our cars are still going to be steering wheels and brakes, but in order to be able to prove that car can drive safely, we need to enable our technology to a point where we can remove those. >> there is this, just just call it the uncanny valley, where they've gotten far enough ahead, but not so far. there's that magic point where you think is is it better to have the machine or the driver? we know it's worse to have both simultaneously. right? >> yes and we believe that
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strongly, that we need to have a clear dif rentuation. our products are level two. we're clear about that. we have some technologies that assist you with that driving but we try to make it clear that you are the driver. no ambiguity in that and really the system is there to assist you rather than perform the act of driving. >> it says wheel and pedals. you are going to use them if there's some kind of accident situation. >> i think the concern though is right if the car is doing some of it, that's when you start to look off here and the wheel may be a -- >> that bothers me. because it's confusing. how we get out of it faster. >> well so neo's approach, we have our level two wukt that you can buy today and we're developing a level four. level two is driver assistance. cruise control, emergency braking, some steering functionins. you're the driver and the
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vehicle is is tr to help you. in a level four, that car works in certain operational lanes. by itself and you're passier in that case. there's a level three which is in the middle. >> sounds like a danger zone. >> the problem with that is there's this ambiguity. because if the driver is not responsible for the act of driving until the car needs them to take over and that's dangerous. >> almost like this unnerving experience that i went through where lyft is going to be doing its autonomous pick ups in las vegas so they have the autonomous car. i'm in it, but we have a safety driver and there's this kind of nebulous nature where they say the unpredictability of pedestria pedestrians. at one point, another car pulled in front of us and that required swift action by the safety driver. this is like the world we live in where we don't know where or who's in charge. >> that is one of the most challenging parts about
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autonomous car. it's a chicken and egg because once everything is autonomous, the act of driving the easier, but we live in a world where these vehicles are going to need to interact with humans and the it's very difficult for humans to predict what another human is going to do. i think the description you just gave is probably a good example of that. >> at neo, you're building electric, autonomous cars. which is the more important? clearly every car maker is working towards electric and autonomous is something you have to. my car does, it's not fancy, but it will do adaptive cruise control and sort of crawl along with the slow traffic. which one is more important? electric or autonomous part to the consumer? >> i think it depends on your time frame. i'm a believer that electric vehicles are one of the things we need to advance to save ourselves from pollution and things that are harming us. hopefully a long-term, a long-term effect that if dwoent take action, we're going to be in trouble. the autonomous vehicle portion,
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that affects change now. you know globally, there's about 1.25 million people who die in traffic every year. there are things we can do every day. this is why these organizations are starting to put in you know rating systems to try to incentivise and mandate certain functioning to try to bring that number down, so we're kind of just attacking both these important problems. >> so for now, we're in china and eventually, you might come to the u.s. the timing although the next couple of years. and what do you think in terms of traditional car companies. just came out with the taken. the sudan, 185,000. are you concerned about the major traditional car maker competition as you move into the u.s.? >> so right now, we want more competition in this space. i'm excited what lyft is going. with reuben. i think every additional electric vehicle that's on the
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road helps that adoption. helps bring more consumers to a point where they're ready to buy an electric vehicle aingd the same thing will happen in years now with autonomous cars. >> let me squeeze in two more questions. you went from tesla to apple to you know where i'm going with this. to neo. so there are cars on either side of itment can we say that apple is working on an autonomous car? >> what i'm allowed to say is i work td on an autonomous system. >> okay. >> i don't think i'm allowed to say that. >> but go on. >> you work at apple? >> three years ago. >> he's confessing. >> yeah. >> fortunately for me, i've been out of there long enough and everybody there respects it well enough that i don't know what they're doing any longer. >> fair enough. the other question i want to squeeze in is this is a chinese
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car made in china. but all of the rnd, every last bit, is down in san jose, california in silicon valley. >> i wouldn't go that far. we have a lot of really core technologies in china as well. i would say more of the advanced rnd that really takes -- >> advanced rnd is happening in silicon valley. why is that? >> well, this is how we establish the company. we have our office, headquarters rather in shanghai. that's where our manufacturing is. our design studio is in munich. our technology operations in san jose. if you really look at that, we kind of have this center of excellence model where we really went for the challenge. >> jamie is the head of autonomous driving at neo. appreciate you being here. >> thank you. up next, a daring entrepreneur tries to do what twitter seems to do. make people play nice online.
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welcome back to press here. there was a time back in the days of the early internet when we thought linking everyone in the world together so they could share ideas would bring peace and understanding. instead, we got this. >> the houston chronicle chronicled a may 16 rally when
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about a dozen or so people waving rebel flag protested the islamic center. >> from facebook to twitter to youtube comments, people are not getting along especially when it comes to politics. which makes the effort that opens cannibal all that more surprising. they working on a platform to allow americans the calmly and rationally discuss political issues and communicate their opinions to representatives in washington. here's a look at countable.u.s. people are dee baiting the green duh gnu deal. looking through the comments, mary says invest ng renewable energy makes financial sense and will pay for itself in the coming years. adam counters the bill would kill free trade markets. clean energy will come but you can't force it. otherwise, sudden change has far reaching economic consequences. and nick say ocasio-cortez is bat crazy. don't let cows fart.
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just stick a cork in it. bart says the fup of the internet could be more about rational discussion, less about car parts. that's generally what you're trying to say. >> yes. >> fair enough. how is bart myers going to accomplish what it seems like facebook, twitter and youtube can't? >> that is, that's been the last four years of our journey has been really honing in on that question and building a platform in technology that can really help to create a civil environment and the secret there is really not that secret. you know when you let people into an open space where they can be anonymous and there are no rules and there's parent in the room, some are going to act in extreme ways. we've seen that a lot of the social networks really benefit from this. they can drive great businesses from making sort of the loudest person in the room the focus. unfortunately, that's not, that's not us.
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that's not the majority of people and i don't think that's really what we're all looking for. ironically, that is what drives eyeballs. and within countable movements in the platform we build, it's a shigtly different mission. we want to give people a platform to get their voices heard and feel safe. feeling safe is on the interin the, dift, so r for us, there are a number ways we do that. which we can do into, but basically, it comes down to know, trusting there's an adult in the room. somebody who's making sure bad actors are caught, but there are communi guidelines. all things that these other platforms could do have largely chosen not to do for reasons that it doesn't necessarily benefit their bottom line. >> that all sounds great. but in practice, i've seen most of the platforms, they sort of come in with these great ideas and well good intentions thep
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they've got to make match oney. then it's like maybe the principles can xwo goh to the side while we make our next quarter. return money to investors. how do you make money? what do you do with the data you're gathering and three, how do you know that mary is actually mary? and it's not some kind of troll from macedonia or moscow? >> those are all great questions. how do we make money? by licensing the technology that we build to do this very thing. we work with company, causes, organizations who are looking for an alternative to facebook. a safe place to bring their communities together. where their communities can interact and engage with each other and do so in an environment where they don't feel like they're subject to those types of threats. and those types of environments. there's really a backlash forming to having your and it's not just for these reasons. for other reasons. keeping changed on your communities, your audiences on platforms like b cebook.
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>> quoucould you work with some social companies like a facebook? facebook, a white flag acknowledged they're testing this idea of going away from public. one of their strength, right, to the point where it's almost kind of a form of sensorship. >> absolutely. >> we have spoken with and had various levels of conversations with all the major networks and they're interesting. i think that there are intrinsic challenges in these types of changes you're talking about which represent millions in revenue for them. making those changes isn't going to happen and it may be something has to force their hand. >> you talk about being the parent in the room and one of the accusations that twitter gets often is they will sensor certain things. and i fully support their right to do that. i make choices. >> i make the choices about who's going to be on this show.
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and the joke is get your own show. >> that's good. i love it. but at the same time, you can introduce buyers by sensorship. >> i think i probably do. opinions that might get suppressed. to my point, the accusation whether it's fair or not on twitter. particularly among conservative voices, oh, you know, i said this. how do you stay appearing neutral when you are trying to keep this thing rational? >> well, the, there's a lot that goes into that. and i think you guys know this firsthand. it's not only about the community. it's about the topic of the subject, the presentation of the issue. as journalists, you're presenting issues and you're trying to do it in this fair manner. is that always bias? >> no. absolutely not. >> no. and then the responses that
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people have are not going to be bias. but i think the thing we have to realize is that the internet the tips the scales where as you're approaching an audience that i would call a bell curve of political views. you would say this is the moderate view and this is extreme. the internet flips that on its head and says the extreme, a lot of people in the room can easily get the most attention. and as a result, we need a different code of conduct. our contract as a society of civilization was not built around letting crazy people talk. it was letting people who care about their communities come together and share reasonable ideas together in a reasonable way. the internet fundamentally has tipped that and early on, it was amazing. >> didn't know it was going to happen. in a way, you're accountable. we don't really know how your system works. your for profit. you answer to your investor. if there's like an independent body or panel that you have that
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comes in and regularly scrutinizes everything that you're doing, you know, political science professor, whatever it is or could you put that in? then i think we'd have a slightly more confidence in what you're doing. >> sure. it's very fair. so transparently, we have a set of community guidelines in year two. the bulk of removal of content is really from the community. when multiple people will flag an issue and say it's inappropriate rngs that goes to basically our team to review. then we take the moderator. >> it's so hard the to put into practice. so difficult to kind of be an arbitrator of viewpoints and something that facebook and twitter continue to trip all over even though they're spending billions of dollars trying to solve that problem. >> sure and some may be scale that you are able to handle the amount of stuff that's coming in. >> i don't think so. i think that's the argument they're going give, but there's
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plenty of, there's plenty of content they're taking down all the time. they are reviewing virtually every piece of content with some mechanism of check. be it adult content. be it certain keywords and phrases. certain types of activities. all things we check for as well. i think fundamentally is a choice. it's a choice by the platforms that it is, and they'll use that as an excuse. but the it's a choice by those platforms that benefits them more to potentially have those extreme form of communication. >> on a closing note, you are a -- before you were doing this. >> correct. >> was this something you had always wanted to do? how does one go from tevo to trying to change the world through people talking pl inini on the internet? >> so, it is a bit of a change. so i've always been interested in sort of politics and political engagement and believe
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there's really something special about form of government and opportunities it affords us. at my core, i want that to be something that we can promote and so the ideas behind countable really came about through how you know i had an opportunity in my career where i could start a company and really take that risk. it kind of came together wonderfully and it's been a, really extraordinary journey. you think about there are a lot of different elements to our ecosystem that we have haven't touched on here. including those who help us to create these types of communities, not just for accountable. but for many customers who are looking for these types. >> and you're right, we don't have time because i've got to make money. i'm very impressed with countable.u.s. and i encourage you if you're polite enough to go on and be a decent grown up
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and use your big boy and girl words, you should. up next, medicine may have really found a way to stop ageing. the fountain of youth. we'll pause on that story when press here continues.
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old age is over.
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declares the cover of the m.it technology review magazine as the first antiageing drug hit the market. silicon valley is sitting up and taking notice. welcome back to press here. you may have heard tale that is some silicon valley execs fill their veins with the blood of young people. sounds absurd, turns out it's true. others though grow old gracefully, two of those men join me now. martin child of the san francisco -- m.i.t. technology review, john of dow jones as well. so i trust mit technology reviewment if i see "people" magazine or something, the secret of youth, i may not pick it up. if mit technology review is talking to me about well maybe there's a secret. i'm going to read it. >> there's a whole bunch of research going on in various different areas that kind of move us towards the point at which you could choose to maybe
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live longer. and there's sort of a very different areas. one is kind of new drugs. as you said, like a group of drugs. they can revert ageing in mice and geese so the idea is can we create a dapations of that. like treating ageing as a disease. >> because if you treat it as disease, then new funding opens up in a way that becomes a different idea in doctor's heads. >> exactly and there's a practical epe genetic. you can switch genes on and off which can rejuvenate tissue. all u of this stuff is very early, but it's getting to the point where we're going to have some serious questions to ask and life expectancy -- >> people are living longer than ever before. joking about what might happen. >> 21 years old. >> never know.
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>> so i think it's a really interesting question because what happens to the economy if we have people living a lot longer. a bio exo skeleton. we aren't quite ready for that. we're worried about ageing populations everywhere. the population here, this would extend the population of ageing even further. >> there would be some economic questions as well. what if there are a group that are able to take the 40 years old drug and another group that can't afford that at all. >> absolutely. and the issue where medical efforts is called manuel, argues we shouldn't go beyond 75. >> just period. >> there are lots of arguments which i won't go into here. it's a provocative view when he says the quality of life just declines from there.
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>> economy, health care. quality of life. >> society. >> massive. >> it's a very big spin. i have friends who are in health care who say much of health care now is is is elderly people and we love our loved ones, but we've gotten away from this idea that well no, but getting old and dying is a thing that happens and it's, it's awful and it's tragic and it's frightening sometimes, but it's also the normal course of life and medicine is working so hard to try to extend out just sometimes by weeks. >> right. >> absolutely. so the question is what is the kind of cost benefit analysis of that and now we have sort of solutions coming through that looks like they may well be able to make it much more than a week. >> on a lighter note, john, you are working on a piece about how billionaires are buying up -- the alibaba cofounder, just
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spent the most amount of money spent. this kind of aligns with what the nba is doing. for the first time ever going to play games in india. preseason games. the olympics are coming up. world championships going on. when he was on the show -- >> robert parra. >> u bik wiities ceo. predicted this was going to happen about six years ago. actually found out later that larry played for that team. >> so what you're saying is as high-tech billionaires are interested in owning sports teams, sports leagues may have to create more teams? >> well actually sports leagues as they're moving into other countries and expanding their footprint into international markets, the values of the team are skyrocketing, which 4u9 putts billionaires in place with being the ones to buy the teams. the billionaires came up with this synergy between the team and their companies. >> so he's gone overseas and got
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a team with overseas appeal. they kind of feed off each other. >> writing about sports and martin. supervising coverage of growing old. make your choice at the newsstand. we'll be back in just a minute.
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that's our show for this week. when we're not working on press, we're working on a new podcast calleded sand hill road. it's about venture capital in silicon valley. you can find it on all the major podcasts providers. my thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.
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>> announcer: this is a presentation of the olympic channel, home of team u.s.a. welcome to the city. new york city where everyone's got to get somewhere fast. among all the regular hustle and bustle is a beloved form of movement here in manhattan, that's running. that's what today is all about. just ask jenny simpson because she knows how to run in this town. the last six years in

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