Where Does Authority Reside In A Networked, Artificially Intelligent World? | David Kirkpatrick

Summary

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Hidden Forces Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Where Does Authority Reside In A Networked, Artificially Intelligent World?
Host: Demetri Kofinas
Guest: David Kirkpatrick (Author of The Facebook Effect, founder of Techonomy Media)
Date: November 13, 2017

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Demetri Kofinas talks with journalist and media entrepreneur David Kirkpatrick about the role and impact of technology—especially artificial intelligence and networked systems—on authority, ethics, society, and the future. The conversation draws on themes from the recent Techonomy 2017 conference, where leaders in technology, academia, and business explored ethical, political, economic, and global challenges posed by technological advancement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Techonomy’s Evolving Mission and Values

• Tech as a Force for Good—Conditional On Intent:

  • David describes how Techonomy’s mission has shifted to more active advocacy for ethical use of technology.
  • "Tech is a force for good when you really seek to do good, but it's not intrinsically a force for good." – David Kirkpatrick [02:12].
  • Argues that as AI and other technologies become ubiquitous, the ethics of those guiding them are crucial.

• Global Perspective:

  • Businesses and technologists must take a global, rather than parochial, approach.
  • Bringing the world's population into the economic mainstream is beneficial to all.

• Technology’s Educational Role and UBI Skepticism:

  • Advocates for using technology to improve education and retraining but strongly opposes the idea of universal basic income (UBI).
  • "Universal basic income is an absolutely wrong-headed idea... people want the dignity of a job and meaningful life." – David Kirkpatrick [04:07].

The Role and Limitations of Technology in Society

• Technology as Central Lens:

  • Technology is the defining tool of humanity and the key to understanding current social dynamics.
  • The pace of technological change is overwhelming, and leaders must adopt a technology-focused lens to remain relevant [05:18].

• Critique of Silicon Valley Utopianism:

  • Demetri raises concerns about Silicon Valley's sometimes naïve approach to problems, e.g., equating brain data transmission with "thought sharing."
  • "They gloss over a bunch of assumptions... It's the same way that Ray Kurzweil talks about uploading his consciousness to a server.” – Demetri [09:22].

• Brain Transparency & Ethics:

  • Advances in "brain-reading" tech are coming, but their ethical and societal implications need urgent debate.
  • "We're going to be able to decipher brain activity in a very thorough and ongoing way for trivially inexpensive cost in the very near future... we need to begin a policy, a strategy, a business dialogue about what it means and an ethical dialogue." – David Kirkpatrick [12:02].

Technology, Political Authority, and Social Trust

• Lack of Political Tech Literacy:

  • Concern that US government lags in understanding technological implications.
  • "We need programmers in Congress. We need data scientists in Congress.” – David Kirkpatrick [16:01].
  • Example: Mark Warner's tech background enables incisive questions for tech executives.

• Regulation, Authority & Data:

  • Demetri and David discuss how present business models (e.g., surveillance capitalism) corrupt social and democratic trust.
  • Both advocate for systems where individuals control their own data—possibly enabled by blockchain—but acknowledge no large-scale solution exists yet [21:16].
  • Europe’s data privacy regulations are viewed as forward-thinking compared to the US [23:02].

• Platforms, Algorithms & Manipulation:

  • The Facebook ad model is critiqued for incentivizing divisive and sensationalist content.
  • "The attention... advertising is basically an attention-based business model where revenues and profits rise to the degree they can seduce the user to spend their time looking at the screen... that leads to... the promotion of fear and anger as content." – David Kirkpatrick [19:18].

Social, Economic, and Environmental Consequences

• Platforms, Markets & Network Effects:

  • Question of whether blockchain or alternative models can disrupt mainstream ad-driven platforms like Facebook. David is skeptical of quick disruption, pointing instead to incremental shifts in attention and new paradigms [28:18].

• Climate Change & Technological Response:

  • David sees smart, networked sensors (IoT) and data as ways to radically improve energy efficiency and combat climate change [34:12].
  • Geoengineering is discussed as a technical possibility for climate control, but its risks, uncertainties, and potential for geopolitical conflict are highlighted (proposals include blocking solar radiation, floating reflective materials) [36:00–43:22].
  • “There is no more nature. People are in control… people have already changed the atmosphere, and particularly the atmosphere and climate.” – David Kirkpatrick [37:01].

• Political Correctness, Science, and Public Discourse:

  • Both discuss the misuse of "science" and facts by all sides in political debate, and lament broad ignorance and dogma around topics like GMOs and vaccines [46:22].

• Global Middle Class, Inequality & Technology:

  • Debate about whether technological benefits reach the many or merely the elite.
  • David is optimistic about a rising global middle class; Demetri is more skeptical, worried about demographic, structural, and ecological bottlenecks [52:51–55:41].

Society, Work, and Automation

• Automation and Job Creation:

  • Kirkpatrick points to conference themes suggesting automation may create as many or more jobs than it displaces. The challenge lies in education and skill transitions [56:08].
  • Example: Despite automation fears, truck driver jobs are unfilled and pay well [57:56].
  • The US educational system is identified as a major weakness in adapting to technological disruption [60:27].

• Individual vs Collective Adaptation:

  • Demetri is skeptical of collective action and emphasizes the importance of individual responsibility and preparation [62:25].
  • David is optimistic about collective societal adaptation, arguing massive changes will require shared effort: "Collective action is necessary... I am much more interested in putting my shoulder to the wheel in the context of a movement of people who care." [63:06]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tech and Ethics:
  "The ethics and moral values of the people determining how the technologies work are going to become more and more determinative in what happens in society." – David Kirkpatrick [02:26]

• On Universal Basic Income:
  "Universal basic income is a absolutely wrong-headed idea... The more people hear irrational, selfish, elitist ideals like UBI coming out of leaders of tech, the more their skepticism about technology is going to grow." – David Kirkpatrick [04:06]

• On Brain-Reading and Thought Privacy:
  "We're going to be able to decipher brain activity... for trivially inexpensive cost... So there's going to be some elements of brain reading as part of the way that society operates, for better or for worse." – David Kirkpatrick [08:45]

• On Platform Incentives:
  "Advertising is basically an attention based business model where revenues and profits rise to the degree they can seduce the user to spend their time looking at the screen... that leads to... the promotion of fear and anger as content." – David Kirkpatrick [19:18]

• On Social Inequality:
  "If it [technology] is just for a small class, then I might as well just hang it up because I'm not interested in it just being for a small class." – David Kirkpatrick [52:51]

• On Educational Reform:
  "The sheer obvious inadequacy of our educational institutions and their inability to really prepare people for the world we know we're entering into." – David Kirkpatrick [60:27]

• On Geoengineering and Climate Authority:
  "Any billionaire could afford to do, or any country could afford to do significant geoengineering currently. It would violate all kinds of global laws to do that. But if you were Bangladesh and faced with the disappearance of your country, you might say, screw it, I'm gonna do it anyway." – David Kirkpatrick [41:28]

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• Techonomy’s mission and values: [01:34–05:18]
• AI, ethics, and future risks: [02:10–06:27]
• Debate about brain-reading technology and tech utopianism: [07:32–13:02]
• Advertising, attention, and algorithmic manipulation: [19:10–21:18]
• Data privacy, blockchain, and potential reforms: [21:16–24:40]
• Facebook & social control: [24:40–27:43]
• Climate change, geoengineering, and political implications: [34:12–43:22]
• On political tribalism, misuse of "science": [46:21–48:17]
• Global middle class and inequality: [52:51–56:00]
• Automation, jobs, and education: [56:08–60:39]
• Collective vs individual action: [62:25–63:06]

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Conclusion

This rich, spirited exchange explores how technological advances are rapidly shifting the axes of authority, trust, and direction in society. It probes the limits of techno-optimism and the risks of neglecting ethics and social adaptation. The episode features frank debate around power, inequality, and the roles of both private innovation and public policy, making it essential listening for anyone wanting to understand the intersections of technology, authority, and the future.

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Transcript

[David Kirkpatrick]

Foreign.

[Dimitri]

What'S up, everybody? Welcome to this Tech Forces segment of the Hidden Forces podcast where I speak with professionals, academics, and anyone else with a technological perspective on current events. My guest for this segment is journalist and commentator David Kirkpatrick. David is the author of the Facebook Effect and the founder of Takonomy Media, which seeks to promote conversations at the highest levels of enterprise, academia and government about the role of technology in social progress. He [e-mail], he's a contributing editor to Bloomberg Television and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. David Kirkpatrick, welcome to Hidden Forces.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Thanks Dimitri. Good to be here.

[Dimitri]

It's great to have you, man. Long time no see.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I know you were at the conference which just ended.

[Dimitri]

How did you feel about that? How did you feel about that?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Oh, feel really good about it. It was probably the best one we've ever done. We've had close to 20 conferences in total and it's the eighth time we've done that flagship conference. I don't think you even mentioned the conference in the intro, but it's the Taconomy 2017 conference just happened in Half Moon Bay, California, was from Sunday through Tuesday. And like I said, the eighth time we've done that two day flagship deep dive conference. And it was certainly one of our best, if not the best. It was really. And I feel more clear about what we're doing with it than I ever have, I'd say.

[Dimitri]

What do you mean? What do you feel more clear about it?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I don't know if you noticed that I began the conference by a list of things that we believe and that really kind of crystallized a new direction for us that, you know, we're not just about bringing people together. We're also about advocating for certain ideas that we, we really believe in. And we're advocates, we're not just neutral journalists. We believe there's things that businesses have to understand, businesses have to do, technologists have to do and understand, and we're not afraid to argue in favor of that.

[Dimitri]

So what are those things in your.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, there's a bunch of them, but one of them is that tech is a force for good when you really seek to do good, but it's not intrinsically a force for good. I think that's very obvious right now with all the controversy around Facebook and Google in the election. You know, you have to really take a hand with technology and consciously steer it. And I think as we enter into more of a technologized society and AI in particular becomes much more Overwhelmingly part of everything around us. The ethics and moral values of the people determining how the technologies work are going to become more and more determinative in what happens in society. So we strongly believe we need people who are really well intentioned and ethical and moral people doing the AI or we're gonna be in trouble. We have all kinds of other things we believe in. We believe you have to take a global view. We think everybody's in this together on the whole planet and businesses have to think in those terms. We really believe that the opportunities for business are truly global and that if we try to bring all, all the people of the planet into the global economy, it's going to benefit them and also benefit business. And that's a big one. We also think that as we approach a world of AI, it's not something like I said, that we can just go into blithely. We have to really be conscious of the need to use technology to improve the educational system. And when it comes to what happens to people whose jobs are displaced, we think that there's going to be lots of new jobs. But one thing we also believe is that universal basic income is a absolutely wrong headed idea.

[Dimitri]

Well, I'm glad you agreed.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That is not one that's going to be accepted by society or we don't even think it should be advocated anymore because it gives. Especially at a time when technology has such a negative image that's rampantly growing at the moment. The more people hear irrational, selfish, elitist ideals like universal basic Income coming out of leaders of tech, the more their skepticism about technology is going to grow. People want the dignity of a job and meaningful life. They don't want to just be given a handout. So there's a bunch of other things, but those are some of the things we believe.

[Dimitri]

Well, it's also not like a really constructive society that you can really bank on for the future. So is it fair to say that kind of an even more general way to describe what you guys do or what you're interested in is that you see technology as an increasingly disproportionately powerful force in society and you're trying to find a way to incorporate your values or to inculcate values that are meaningful to all the players involved. Whether we're talking about social responsibility, whether we're talking about global interconnectivity, whether we're talking about politics, whether we're Talking about money, etc.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Is that kind of, I mean, the way I think of it, aside from the fact that we bring People together, we are believers in certain values. We think technology is a very valuable lens through which to look at society and to interpret what's happening in modern life. And we believe technology is so deeply implicated in everything that's happening that if you think about the technology angle in the past, the present and the future, you're going to have more insight into what's really happening. You know, technology is the central tool of mankind and it always has been, you know, from the invention of fire. And right now its pace of evolution is so astonishingly rapid and disorientingly rapid that we think that it's very valuable and almost necessary for anybody who's in a position of leadership at least, and for anybody who wants to understand what's going on, to use that lens to understand what's going on. And also that if you do have values and goals to achieve things in society, technology inevitably is going to be a central part of the levers you're going to use to achieve the results you see.

[Dimitri]

Do you think that many people, even people that were at the conference that spoke at the conference, what's the correct term for it when you're living in the clouds around what's possible and thinking that technology is a solution to things that it is not, or not seeing the perils and the dangers. And I'm thinking very specifically, I've got your. By the way, I have one complaint. You have such beautiful pamphlets and magazines that I never throw them away.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Good. That's intention.

[Dimitri]

You gotta talk to the mic.

[David Kirkpatrick]

David. We spend a lot of time making beautiful print products.

[Dimitri]

I don't like.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We don't believe that everything is digital. That's another part of our way of looking at the technologized world, that if you go totally towards digital, you lose the human touch. And when it comes to our content, we have found that putting it on paper, in a magazine, in a print program for the conference, et cetera, enhances its impact by a dramatic margin.

[Dimitri]

Well, magazines are awesome. I love magazines. And this is beautiful. You've got the COVID of TechOnomy 2017. This is the year end magazine. Is artificial intelligence Win, lose or draw?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Question mark.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, question mark.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That was a big theme of the conference.

[Dimitri]

Okay, so here's the thing that brings us back to what I was going to say before I interrupted myself because I was staring at your beautiful little pamphlets. Here, David, is the panel that you had with Mary Lou Jepsen. Now, there were other people on the panel, but first of all, I didn't even know who she was apparently everyone knew who she was except for me. And I asked the question at that panel and I was sort of. I felt like what I was asking was pretty commonsensical.

[David Kirkpatrick]

What was it? I forget.

[Dimitri]

It was essentially like, you know, she was talking about, you know, sharing our thoughts and then she said like, our capacity to share our thoughts using this technology is going to be moments more intimate than sex. And I'm like, first of all, you're not sharing your thoughts.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You're a Greek guy. Nothing could be more intimate than sex. Right? Okay, keep going.

[Dimitri]

Come on. It has nothing to do with this. Look, what I'm saying is you're not sharing your thoughts, right? I'm not sharing my thoughts with you. If we have a computer that's intermediating that communication, I'm sharing some half baked idea that's in my brain that I don't fully understand. I don't know.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Look, I'm not gonna say what's gonna happen in the future, but I think she's earnest in saying what she believed is possible.

[Dimitri]

Isn't that nuts?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I don't know. I don't believe it to be nuts necessarily. I think there is a lot of controversy and even on that panel there was controversy about what is the nature of quote, unquote, a thought.

[Dimitri]

Well, let me tell the audience first.

[David Kirkpatrick]

To know, but there is no question that we're going to be able to decipher brain activity in a very thorough and ongoing way for trivially inexpensive cost in the very near future. So there's going to be some elements of brain reading as part of the way that society operates for better or for worse. Now, whether that means, as she puts it, that we can quote, unquote, swirl our thoughts around with each other, I don't know. I'm skeptical of that a little bit just because it seems so, in a sense idealistic and so implausible based on where we are now.

[Dimitri]

But can I just reframe that a minute? Hold on, let me just reframe that. And also let me mention to the audience that you had. This is a really cool panel you had. How do you pronounce the guy's name? Rohit.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Rohit, yeah, Rohit.

[Dimitri]

Who is the guy that oversees Rohit.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Saad, who's the chief technology, chief scientist in Alexa's learning, basically AI part of Alexa.

[Dimitri]

Yeah. You had a lot of really great guys. You had a lot of great.

[David Kirkpatrick]

He's a top scientist at Amazon's Alexa developer.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, you had a lot of great men and women in all sorts of Panels and talks and stuff like that. These were conversations that were going on at Taconomy with people who actually are influential in the industry in these areas. So I should point that out as well. Let's scale it back a second. When we're talking about thoughts, what I'm saying is that in Silicon Valley, for me, when I hear these conversations, they gloss over a bunch of assumptions that they just sort of assume that they understand what they're talking about when they talk about a thought, and that they're able to just simply translate that. It's the same way that Ray Kurzweil talks about uploading his consciousness to a server. I mean, to me, it's such an outrageous thing to say. It's not outrageous to say.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I think Ray Kurzweil's motives are very different from Mary Lou's. Let me try to interpret what I think she's doing. First of all, the company she's starting is initially trying to come up with a very, very inexpensive alternative MRIs for medical reasons. And that's probably something they'll do in the near future.

[Dimitri]

Can you explain that a little bit? What she was doing?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Basically, you know, MRIs require a very, very expensive device which essentially aligns the electrons in your atomic structure in order to read the shapes inside your body. Right. She has a way of doing something very similar with infrared, infrared light, which is not invasive, much less probably health impairing because, you know, Mr. MRIs are, they do great diagnostic work. But, you know, I don't think we even know what happens to our bodies when an external force, basically a bunch of magnets that powerful, realign our, you know, physical essence so fully as an MRI does. But she's talking about a trivially developing a trivially inexpensive tools that allow us to see inside our bodies in order to do medical diagnosis initially. That's her first goal.

[Dimitri]

It wouldn't be. It would actually.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, that would be down the road. I think first she gonna sell products that allow medical practitioners, even in the developing world, where MRIs are absolutely unaffordable and nonexistent, to do much more accurate diagnostic work with people. But what she's saying when she gets into this, swirling our thoughts around, she's just trying to get a discussion going because of the technology trajectory that she sees likely. But it's sort of like, you know, Moore's Law, you know, she's saying we have to prepare ourselves for a society where we're going to be able to read our brain activity. And she's not saying she Knows what that means. She's not saying she knows in what circumstances we'll wanna do it, but she's saying the pace of the technology's evolution right now suggests some version of that's going to be possible in a relatively small number of years. And we need to begin a policy, a strategy, a business dialogue about what it means and an ethical dialogue about what it.

[Dimitri]

Maybe I misunderstood because I did get any sense from her whatsoever that she was concerned at all about who the gatekeepers were in this future. Well, that wasn't my question.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Talking about it as much on the session, I admit, but I know her very well and I know what she's.

[Dimitri]

She would find that concerning. Well, cause I'm telling you, like I.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Smells like pot in here, you know.

[Dimitri]

It really does, you know, so. Okay, so listen, it's so funny that you think it smells like pot in here.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Oh, it does smell like pot.

[Dimitri]

It does smell like pot in here. So look, I just don't. I just don't. I'm just insensitive to it because this is where we do our shows and it always smells like pot. But it's very interesting that you say.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It'S a recording studio, so that does.

[Dimitri]

It's a hip hop studio, so. But the thing is, this is nothing. We're doing this right now at 5pm on a Thursday. All right? You should come in here in the morning. So we have.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Do they have any ventilation in this place?

[Dimitri]

It's a soundproof place, man. There's no. It's got ventilation, but like, you know, so, so listen, hold on.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You said we could talk about it. That's fine.

[Dimitri]

Don't worry. You're not gonna get a contact tie. We already had Heather Belinda and she's half your size and she was fine, but. And it was. And it was. The place was full of smoke that morning, so. Do you know Heather Berlin?

[David Kirkpatrick]

No.

[Dimitri]

So we did. We. Anyway, this. We did an episode a couple shows ago and she came in and it was like, really, you know.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Did she comment on it?

[Dimitri]

Yeah, she commented we about it on the program and I had actually spoken to your wife. I told you I was coming on. She said she wanted to pass by and be here and I told her it was going to smell like weed. Expecting that somehow for some reason, David, I just assumed that that would be okay with you.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, it's not that.

[Dimitri]

It's.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, I don't. I'd rather not smell it because like I said, I used to smoke it a lot and I don't Smoke it at all anymore. Anyway, keep going. I don't smoke pot at all. And I haven't for many years.

[Dimitri]

When did you stop?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Like, decades ago.

[Dimitri]

Okay, so there's that. There's the pot thing. Where were we? Where were we in this conversation?

[David Kirkpatrick]

We were talking about brain changes. So I guess it's not entirely irrelevant.

[Dimitri]

It's not entirely irrelevant. And there's a lot of research that's gone into psilocybin research and.

[David Kirkpatrick]

No, but, you know, I think one of the points about the Mary Lou stuff is. And this is a big part of the way Techonomy looks at the world, and the reason we do our work and have our events and our publishing is that the. But the pace of technology's evolution is faster than most people really want to acknowledge. And, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, overestimate the impact in two years and you underestimate the impact in 10 years. I mean, we are entering into a fundamentally different world on many, many metrics, and it's incumbent on us to take stock of that for our own lives, for our businesses, and for our governments and our countries. And one of the reasons why, frankly, we do Teconom is that as an American, I am so concerned and distressed that we have a government that is so fundamentally disregarding of what's happening with technology. I mean, aside from military uses, our government really doesn't show much awareness that we are entering into a completely different kind of economy. I mean, right now we have the advocacy for coal and more, drilling for oil and all that garbage. The reality is every other country on the planet literally is basically thinking in more modern terms than we are. China, which is our biggest economic competitor and adversary, is a highly technologically sophisticated country.

[Dimitri]

Well, they're also authoritarian, and they're authoritarian.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Maybe they're stealing a lot of our intellectual property to achieve their goals, but they have no illusions that technology is the tool for social and economic progress. We do have illusions about that, and I would love to help dispel the illusions. I mean, we need programmers in Congress. We need data scientists in Congress. You know, it's interesting you look at Congress right now.

[Dimitri]

Well, first of all, you and I know very well that most of the engineers disproportionately, that we know would not be very good.

[David Kirkpatrick]

No, but there are some. We'll have to find the ones that are.

[Dimitri]

But what do you mean, though?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Mark Warner was a CEO of a tech company, Nextel, and that's one of the reasons why in the Senate, he knows what questions to ask Facebook, Google and Twitter when Brian Ford is running.

[Dimitri]

For Congress and Brian Ford was at.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Our conference and he's running for Congress and he's a blockchain expert. That would be fantastic if he got elected.

[Dimitri]

Well, you know, I don't know. I mean, I definitely agree that we should have more technological literate people in Congress, but I'm just. I can't get too excited. Whenever someone starts running for Congress, I hold them to very high standards. I mean, in general, I'm very well.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Then you must be constantly, chronically disappointed. If you hold politicians to high standards, there are virtually none that can live up to them.

[Dimitri]

Well, okay, so in today's world. Yeah, so I wouldn't say I'm disappointed. I hold them to high standards. In other words, I'm not disappointed because I chronically have low expectations about what they can do. But I hold. I just can't get optimistic about politics.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You just get not optimistic generally.

[Dimitri]

No, that's not true. I am optimistic about things that are within my sort of.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, because if you're not optimistic about politics, it means other great things may happen and we will not have a society that can handle them. Because politics is the vehicle by which we build the, you know, barriers, the guideposts, the, you know, the rules and regulations that determine how society functions. And believe me, we are gonna need a lot different rules and regulations for the world that I can see us headed into unless we want to have something approaching total chaos. I mean, even just this stuff with Facebook and Google right now in the election, is this very clear indicator of where we're headed? You know, they built these advertising systems which were hijacked for political purposes because realize they couldn't.

[Dimitri]

That's the big. See, this is where I think we differ.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Right.

[Dimitri]

I don't think that the Russians are the biggest threat in terms of the way in which these technologies are used.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I didn't say that. I said it's just indicative. I said an advertising based system that can be manipulated is an example of not having rules and understanding, even of what systems already are governing society and how they ought to be managed.

[Dimitri]

But any system. Hold on, David. Any system can be manipulated, right? I mean, I think we agree on that, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, sure. And mostly we try to anticipate that as much as we can in advance and come up with some effective rules of the road to keep things from going completely off the rails.

[Dimitri]

I'm more concerned about what the ad model in technology promotes through its own commercial interests rather than some sort of Nefarious.

[David Kirkpatrick]

What do you mean by that?

[Dimitri]

In other words, the way in which Facebook's algorithms promote garbage.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, one of the things that came.

[Dimitri]

Up, it does produce good content is.

[David Kirkpatrick]

That the attention, you know, advertising is basically an attention based business model where revenues and profits for the company rise to the degree they can seduce the user to spend their time looking at the screen. So they are incented to do whatever they can to get that attention.

[Dimitri]

Right. Their content agnostic.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And that leads to, as Roger McNamee, who was at the conference said, the promotion of fear and anger as content. Because that's what gets people to stare most obsessively at a screen.

[Dimitri]

And they don't have to design the platform that way. They don't have to do that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, advertising almost by definition militates in that direction.

[Dimitri]

Well, have you seen anything like Tristan Harris? He talks about the difference between the idealized self and the actual self.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, Tristan Harris is not a big fan of the advertising business model for these companies.

[Dimitri]

Exactly. No. So I agree with you on that. That's what I'm saying. Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. No, you can't have the admirer. No, no, I agree.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, that's all I'm saying.

[Dimitri]

Okay. No, we're in complete agreement.

[David Kirkpatrick]

What other business model is there for these companies then though? That's the problem. I mean, they don't really have an alternative at the moment. So the question of what constitutes reform is a very complicated one. If the fundamental business model that's built them a half trillion dollar plus market cap and the, you know, endless affection of Wall street can't be substituted with something else. That's the problem.

[Dimitri]

All right, well, let's talk about that. I do think that there are opportunities in the private sector for companies to build subscription based models that actually provide quality content that begin to.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, sure, they're tiny businesses, but.

[Dimitri]

Yes, well, they're tiny, but. Right. You can't have a mass market, but the masses are never going to be interested in digesting the high quality content. That's just not something that people aren't going to.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You're not going to build a 2 billion person media business based on paid membership and subscription.

[Dimitri]

But you don't need to.

[David Kirkpatrick]

There are some alternatives that have been proposed, but they're hard to envision them being embraced by the current incumbents. Like what? Well, basically the most likely, in my opinion, is some kind of model that achieves the long sought, still chimerical goal of the individual truly controlling their own personal Data and effectively functioning as the gatekeeper to commercial interests so that the individual can approve or disapprove of advertising and other messages that come from them and to them. And if they do receive commercial messages, they somehow get compensated as part of that process. And blockchain is often mentioned as a very logical, if possibly unlikely, because of its current complexity, but that it might be a way that could enable the construction of such systems.

[Dimitri]

So that's a very good place for government regulation. Right. Which has to do with. So there is this issue with the way that the U.S. legal system interprets and understands data privacy. Right. I mean, like, we haven't done a good job with that. So that's a place where the spirit of the law doesn't follow the actual letter of the law or the way it's applied or the way the implications of it. Right. So that's a place where, if we had more control over our data, so many other problems would be solved.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, do you know how long people have been trying to give individuals control over the data? One of the things.

[Dimitri]

And why is that? The reason that we can't do is because of the. Because of money, politics, and corruption, and.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Government, among other things.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, no, that's it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, that's not like government's gonna, like, militate. Is gonna require a blockchain system. They don't even know the word blockchain, not to mention what it means.

[Dimitri]

Why don't even change that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

But take even.

[Dimitri]

I'll say one thing, one thing, one thing. Europe, they've had much better regulations, tighter regulations, higher standards of privacy, and sort of the expression of digital rights than the United States. And that's come before any distributed ledger technologies or anything like that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, they're moving that direction, but they are really just instituting that regime now. And the commercial implications of it are quite complicated. And they may be very expensive for companies to comply with, which might then cause these systems to be less either profitable or successful or used. But I will make a point that I, you know, since I know a lot about Facebook, since I did write the only history that's ever been written about it, the Facebook effect, you know, Facebook actually did represent a major leap forward for the control of privacy by the individual. And it's not often understood properly. But the way that it did that was by allowing you to determine who your friends were on Facebook, that. That in effect, in the earlier years of Facebook, gave you control of the flow of information that was coming to you. Even to this day, you have the judgment and the option of whether or not to follow a site, follow a page on Facebook, and that is largely what determines what you see as the consumer of data. So that does give you a modicum of control, which seems meaningless at this point because the quantities that are flowing there are so vast. But it's very different from, say, Twitter. I mean, Twitter has certain critical, similar features, but it doesn't give you nearly the same control.

[Dimitri]

So I can't verify this because I've only experienced it myself. In other words, I can't prove it. But on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, I've seen Instagram, my Instagram account, follow a bunch of accounts that I've never, ever, ever followed.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Those are probably advertisements. No, no, no.

[Dimitri]

You don't understand what I mean. I mean, I've gone into my followers and I've seen that randomly, in different.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Moments that shouldn't be.

[Dimitri]

Well, I think that they don't need to actually do it to actually show me that. But I think that they're constantly tweaking and messing with their algorithm, and they're doing all sorts of stuff. I mean, not think we need to.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Theoretically, I'd have to look at their terms of service, and I don't know if it addresses this directly, but for them to follow other people on your behalf would seem to me to be a violation of the trust that they have with their users.

[Dimitri]

So they definitely have done that. Yeah, they definitely did it. And I don't think that it necessarily shows up to the other people that say, oh, Demetri followed you. I think it's just something where they just mess. They just screw around with that kind of stuff. I don't know how that works, man. All I know is I've seen it many times where I've gone into the accounts because someone will show up on my feed, and it's not a promotion or it doesn't look like a promotion. That's happened on Instagram many times.

[David Kirkpatrick]

But what's the point of mentioning that, if I might ask?

[Dimitri]

Well, because that goes back to. That undermines your point about the fact that we control. We don't control.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I'm talking about Facebook, not Instagram.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, okay, fine, fine.

[David Kirkpatrick]

But Instagram has some elements. I'm saying that the structural design of the Facebook service gave you control in a way nobody ever had before. To some degree, Twitter, Instagram and other services, Snap. Also have imitated this function. But Facebook, by allowing you to determine who showed you information because you had to accept them as a friend or follow them as a Page. That was a major leap forward on the Internet in terms of controlling the data flow to use. That's all I'm saying.

[Dimitri]

As opposed to turning on your television and getting a broadcast commercial.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, I mean, in that sense, yeah, you kind of decided what channel to watch, but it's more invasive from a digital flow point of view. Facebook pointed in a direction of something that has not really been very much followed up on, except, you know, in the quote unquote followership model that Twitter and Instagram and others have copied from Facebook. But we need a fundamental advance in the control of data flows, and we need a fundamental advance that's very parallel to that in the control of our own personal information by us. And even though that has been known as a need for well over a decade, it has not been something that has been achieved at any commercial scale by anyone, except to the limited degree I mentioned.

[Dimitri]

In the case of, I don't know, I find Facebook, I don't even know if I could give them any credit at all for anything that has to do with giving me more control over anything at all.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, at this point, it's easy to not give them credit, but, you know, they've gone through a number of other phases in their history, and their architecture did represent a step forward in user control. That's in my opinion.

[Dimitri]

I mean, I guess. I don't know. All I know is that, you know, they've gotten worse and worse from my experience.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, you could say they've gotten greedier and greedier because they, you know, people are jumping all over them to buy ads from them because they're the most targetable ad medium in history. And everybody wants to get ads in front of the right people. And Facebook is the system that makes that easiest and cheapest. So that's why Facebook's business prospects are vast.

[Dimitri]

Do you think that there might be a market competitor that'll show up and put Facebook out of business? Maybe even a blockchain or DLT related social media network sometime?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. How soon is the question? I mean, I don't know. I would say if you were guessing eventually, if there were a system that did the same kinds of things that Facebook does and put them out of business, the only way I can envision that happening would be probably something that had a blockchain element to it. But the reality is, the way these things tend to work is that what will put them out of business is the rise of some other new kinds of systems that command attention that would otherwise go to Facebook, not that are Quote, unquote social networks. Because that is essentially a passe concept in terms of current innovation. You know, obviously we want to have data flows with other people, but we don't have to have a quote, unquote social network structure to do it. I think Snap, Snapchat actually does represent a step forward that is quite potentially powerful, partly because they vet every ad, they sell ads much more like a TV network sells ads. And as a result, they have much more control. So the potential for abuse on Snap is much lower. So if you notice, Snapchat has not been the slightest bit implicated in any electoral manipulation.

[Dimitri]

So a blockchain or DLT related system that doesn't have the burden of proof of work and that can scale actually theoretically wouldn't require an ad driven model, because everyone could sort of participate in maintaining the ledger themselves and maintaining the network themselves and using their computing power, and that would be basically the way that you enter the network.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, somebody's gotta make some money somewhere along the line in order to justify the effort to put it all together. But.

[Dimitri]

But not that much.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, you don't probably not that much. I'm not at all disputing that something like that is possible. I absolutely agree with you that something like that is, at least in theory possible, but it doesn't seem to exist at the moment.

[Dimitri]

The question is, are we gonna, are we gonna survive? Are we gonna have a war with North Korea before we get there?

[David Kirkpatrick]

That is always a question.

[Dimitri]

What do you think of all this stuff? So you opened Economy with a video. What was that video that you put up?

[David Kirkpatrick]

The video was starting out by showing the election of Donald Trump. And then who you're a big fan.

[Dimitri]

Of, you voted for Trump, didn't you? Twice, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Twice, yeah. Then it was the next day, our conference opened the next day, Wednesday, the day after the election, last year was the opening day of our conference. And that night Mark Zuckerberg came and spoke. And that's when he said, it's a crazy idea that fake news on Facebook affected the election. So we showed that video. We showed the Trump getting elected, Wolf Blitzer announcing it on cnn. Then we showed Zuckerberg saying this at our conference the next day. Then we showed some brief clips just demonstrating how fundamentally wrong he was. And, you know, we had a Ari Melber clip from MSNBC from the last few weeks just listing some of the more outrageous that were fake stories that caught gigantic traction on Facebook that are at least presumably very much pushed by the Russians during that period. So, you know, we were Just trying to show that technology doesn't always have good consequences. I mean, it goes to my point before that, which is one of our big beliefs, that technology is only good if you develop it with good intentions and deliberately try to seek to make it good. And you have to be very careful to try to militate against it going bad. And it's always a risk.

[Dimitri]

Do you really think that Russian intelligence, the interference of Russian intelligence operations were what caused the loss of Hillary Clinton's campaign?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I don't know. Nobody has yet shown that. But there is reason to think it could be true. If you look at the narrowness of the margin in Wisconsin and the uptake of some of these fake ads and very divisive posts from non advertising based Russian facilitated accounts on Facebook and Twitter and how powerful they were received in Wisconsin in the months and weeks prior to the election. And you know, Hillary only lost Wisconsin by like 20,000 votes. So, you know, Wisconsin and Michigan were in Pennsylvania. Those were the critical states. Wisconsin and Michigan were the states. And you know, so it's conceivable, I think, considering the closeness of the victory and the criticality of those states, that ads on Facebook and other content on Facebook that was planted by the Russians had enough of an impact that it swung the election. That's not certain. I don't know that it's definitely possible. I've not heard anybody say it's not possible.

[Dimitri]

Were you happy with Hillary Clinton as a candidate?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, she wasn't my favorite, but she's damn best better than Trump. I mean, I think she would have, you know, she would have been.

[Dimitri]

But Trump is. Trump is a catalyst. He is a catalyst, right?

[David Kirkpatrick]

For some things, sure. I mean, I don't want to. I didn't come up here to talk politics.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, well, you put the video up at the conference, so I figured we.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Were just talking about reality. Trump was elected. Zuckerberg said fake news had nothing to do with it, and Facebook. And we showed that now that is seen as a real possibility. That's all we saw said. That's what our little video was intended to demonstrate.

[Dimitri]

So what do you think? Let's bring it back to technology here. What do you think the most exciting single technology is on the horizon? Is it blockchain? AI is hard to even call AI a technology. Obviously it's not a technology, clearly. And there's so many things that go into AI. It's such an intersection of data and analytics and computation and all this stuff. But what sort of do you look at and think this is really? Or renewables. Right. Because of the issues of climate change and global warming. What do you kind of look at and say this is really exciting? This is really.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I actually, to be honest, right now, looking forward, I don't see one quote unquote technology that gets me tremendously excited. I will tell you, a technologically driven change that I expect, that I find exciting and that is the Internet of Things as a tool to much more exactly control and monitor our use of energy as a means to combat climate change. That is probably the biggest single promise in my opinion of the Internet of Things in coming years is that we can essentially instrument our consumption and production of energy so that we really don't have the waste we have today. And that could be a very big deal. So that matters to me. That's something I'm very excited about because I think you want to talk about things to worry about. You know, the change in climate is a genuine thing to worry about and probably one of the very small number of things that we most need to be focusing on working to address right now. So, you know, yeah, virtual reality goggles are cool and they're gonna happen in some form. They're happening and we'll be able to feel like we're in the, you know, co d'. Azur, but that doesn't get excited like actually having a real, putting a real dent in human energy, reducing carbon production so that we can have a climate that doesn't, you know, basically burn us to death so that the polar ice caps don't melt, so that the Gulf Stream doesn't stop, you know, so that Europe doesn't turn into an ice age. These are real possibilities.

[Dimitri]

Well, a lot of those things are already baked into the cake. They're already baked into the cake.

[David Kirkpatrick]

No, no, that's not true. They're not baked into any cake. Nothing is baked into a cake.

[Dimitri]

Well, a lot of the warming is already baked in.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Based on the warming might be baked in. But we can still do.

[Dimitri]

No, no, I'm not saying we can't. I'm not saying we can't.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We can still do geoengineering, don't forget that.

[Dimitri]

I mean, but geoengineering is not going to turn the ice cube back into a cube. The melted ice on the counter, in other words. What I'm saying is that it could.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Definitely, you could, you could refreeze the polar ice. I mean, you would be very hard pressed to be exact about it enough at the moment based on what we know. But there's no question that if warming were to get out of control and people really did begin to be worried about things like the cessation of the Gulf Stream, which is one of the biggest things to be concerned about, then you could geoengineer that into probably being sustained.

[Dimitri]

Hold on, when you say geoengineer, you're talking about extracting greenhouse gases from the upper atmosphere?

[David Kirkpatrick]

No, I'm talking about basically blocking the sun's rays from hitting the Earth.

[Dimitri]

Right, but. Okay, right, but what I'm. But in order to do that, if you wanted, let's say you melt the ice caps.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Let's say it's not easy and it won't be.

[Dimitri]

It's more than just not easy. You're talking about decreasing the temperature of nature.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, when you talk about things baked in, I'm saying, Demetri, we are a technologized society. Basically, there is no more nature. People are in control. That's one thing you have to get a grip on. There is no nature.

[Dimitri]

I don't know if I agree with that. So I just interviewed Gavin Schmidt, actually, for like an hour and a half.

[David Kirkpatrick]

There's a great book, Stewart Brand, called Whole Earth Discipline, that talks about this that I think is quite important.

[Dimitri]

So, look, I'm not coming at this from a place of saying that we can't influence the warming, that we aren't causing the warming, that we aren't probably the 100% cause of the warming, that we can't influence it, and that we don't need to influence it. All those things are true. What I'm saying is a lot of the warming that's going to happen has already been baked into the cake. That's how detrimental and scary this is.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's been baked into the cake in terms of the carbon that's in the atmosphere. Now, if we didn't do geoengineering, that may be the case. Yes, well, you have the ability to do geoengineering.

[Dimitri]

I don't intend otherwise.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's definitely possible. Possible.

[Dimitri]

I'll tell you what I think it's not easy. I think this is a distinction between us. I think that you think that and it makes sense. Obviously built your career on really believing in what technology can do. I think that there is an overestimation of what technology can do. And I think we live in an age where we see all these things like Elon Musk taking moonshots and autonomous driving vehicles and all this stuff, and we see all these amazing things that the technology can do. But I still think that nature actually is in Control.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I don't actually think people are in the larger scale. Nature is in control.

[Dimitri]

But that's what climate change is like.

[David Kirkpatrick]

A tiny little planet in a vast universe. And we don't control the universe. I'm not saying that, but I think when it comes to the Earth, people have already changed the atmosphere, and particularly the atmosphere and climate. People have changed it willingly, willfully or inadvertently. But it is because of people that we have the atmosphere in the form we do today. So we, we have to take responsibility for that. And that's one reason, you know, elementary point. I support the Paris Accords, but I do think if we don't succeed in reducing our carbon production enough to slow the warming, you know, either we're going to lose Bangladesh, we're going to possibly have an ice age in Europe, or we do some drastic things to try to control the atmosphere. And maybe in the interim, we could find time to improve our energy production capabilities so that we can stop producing so much carbon. But, you know, it's not just carbon, obviously. It's also, you know, methane is actually much, much worse. And we don't even, you know, that's. We're trying to get rid of regulations on that in the United States.

[Dimitri]

I did an interview just before having you on the program, which is not out yet, and it'll be out at some point. I don't actually know when I'm going to release it. I had planned to release it in a week from now, but it'll probably be released in a couple weeks with Gavin Schmidt, NASA's the director of the Goddard Institute, the guy that replaced Hansen. And we talked the entire time about climate change, about modeling, about the.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Did you talk to him about geoengineering? Did he bring it up?

[Dimitri]

We talked a little bit about it towards the end. And he just, you know, the point was, yeah, there's some stuff that you.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Can do, but people like him don't want to talk about it because it seems like it gives you an out. I mean, if you are somebody who wants to really advocate for responsibility on.

[Dimitri]

Carbon, so where are we then?

[David Kirkpatrick]

You don't want to be talking about geoengineering because it makes people go, oh, I haven't found bother. No longer driving my flying, for example, which is the worst thing we do, I won't bother stopping flying. I will just wait for geoengineering to solve the problem. And you can see why someone like that doesn't want to address it.

[Dimitri]

Okay, well, that could be true. Right? But let's talk about geoengineering and sort of the facts of geoengineering.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And I'm not an expert in geoengineering.

[Dimitri]

By the way, I'm not, But I.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Know enough to know that it's generally possible.

[Dimitri]

Well, I haven't read anything that makes sense me believe that it's going to be a solution anytime soon. And like I said, if we.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It could be done at any time.

[Dimitri]

What do you mean?

[David Kirkpatrick]

All you have to do is put particulates in the upper atmosphere and you can start changing the amount of radiation that hits the Earth. That can be done. It's just adding reflectivity in various ways. You can also float gigantic pieces of Styrofoam in the oceans, which is another thing that has been proposed to reflect more heat back into the atmosphere, back away from the Earth. You know, there's a lot of things that can be done if it gets urgent enough.

[Dimitri]

Where are these proposals coming from and how. And how expensive are they proposals for much of that?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Because they're very expensive to do it. Right. One of the interesting things about geoengineering, which I did not come here today to discuss, but one of the interesting things about geoengineering is to do elementary geoengineering is not that expensive. Any billionaire could afford to do, or any country could afford to do significant geoengineering currently. It would violate all kinds of global laws to do that. But if you were Bangladesh and faced with the disappearance of your country, you might say, screw it, I'm gonna do it anyway. We had a session at an earlier conference, Taconomy, a few years ago, where someone who's very well informed on this predicted that future wars will likely be fought over geoengineering. Because some countries are going to have such divergent interest, interests from other countries and countries that are going to disappear or be radically harmed by sea rise will be much more incentive to do geoengineering than countries that are fundamentally, you know, not affected, but the weather will be affected for everybody. And that could affect rainfall, it could affect agricultural yields, it could affect all kinds of things. And you know, people may fight physical wars over this.

[Dimitri]

Well, I haven't seen. I haven't seen. And maybe that's just because I haven't found the right sources, But I haven't seen or read anything that tells me that any anyone knows anything about how to do geoengineering in any realistic way.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, you should read more about it because they do know how to do it. Okay, well, it's not being done because it's still considered super Risky. Because it's very hard to know how much of anything to do when you start messing with climate.

[Dimitri]

That's what I mean, though.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, but we're messing with the climate already is what your guest that you just interviewed was talking about. We are messing with the climate, so. So either we stop messing with the climate that way or reduce it, or else we're gonna have to mess with the climate another way. That's all I'm saying.

[Dimitri]

What a disaster that would be. You know what that sounds like to me? You know what that sounds like to me?

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's a disaster already. The climate is changing. Did you notice?

[Dimitri]

Yeah, but that, David, that sounds like a disaster to me. What you're describing. That's like when you're like, hey, it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Was a disaster already in Puerto Rico, in Houston.

[Dimitri]

That's like when I knew guys that juiced in the Philippines, in Mumbai, you.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You know, come on, man, this stuff's happening now.

[Dimitri]

No, I hear you. All right, But I knew. Okay, so we grew up in different times. I grew up in. I went to high school in New York in the late 90s. That was like people were taking steroids and juicing basically in high school. Lots of people were doing that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Wow, that's a non sequitur. But go ahead.

[Dimitri]

No, it's not, and I'll explain why. So people were taking steroids. A lot of people were taking steroids than I knew. And they wereand taking growth hormone, whatever else. I mean, they were messing around with their body's hormones, and to counteract one thing, they were doing it with another. And that happens with other drugs in general. Right. What we're describing.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You're describing already doing that.

[Dimitri]

No, what we're doing is we're adding.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We're adding carbon and greenhouse gas energy is. It's just doing something else to compensate for something else. We already.

[Dimitri]

But that's like the natural approach. That's like saying, I'm gonna stop taking.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Drugs, and now we're doing windmills and solar because we did too much of that other thing.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, but. Yeah, but I'm saying the one example, David, is saying, okay, we've been screwing up the climate by doing X. We're gonna do less of X. That's like saying, I'm addicted to heroin. I'm gonna start taking less of heroin.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Okay, well, let's start doing less of this heroin.

[Dimitri]

But with geoengineering, if people start unilaterally messing with the atmosphere.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The only reason I brought it up is you said it's inevitable that the warming is going to occur, that's all.

[Dimitri]

Well, I didn't say that. I said a lot of it's already baked into the cake. Okay, So I think, anyway, we're talking past each other here. My point being, my point is it's a serious issue, but this is where I wanted to go with that before we went off on this tangent, which is, okay, global warming, agreed. You and I both agree on this. This is a very serious matter. Matter more than not a good thing. And we get into with Gavin Schmidt, we talk about the effect it would have on sewage treatment. I mean, he's. I'll tell you what he is. He's scared probably of political correctness around all of this stuff.

[David Kirkpatrick]

He's not scared of social disorder, as people say.

[Dimitri]

No, no, I'm sure he's scared of all that stuff. But what I noticed when I spoke to him was that, you know, like this is such a politically correct guy.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You know, here's just quickly, just a quick note that a lot of people don't remember to put together. This is already affecting geopolitics. One of the reasons Syria turned into such a disaster was they had a multi year drought prior to the Arab Spring in Syria. That was part of what precipitated desperation and has led to the enormous. It's not just war, it's also drought that led to vast migrations. A lot of the immigration troubles in Europe are driven by drought driven suffering in the Middle east as well as political suffering. And same with African migration to Europe. A lot of it is climate related.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, for sure.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Let's not pretend that this isn't already affecting geopolitics. For sure it is.

[Dimitri]

100%. 100% I agree. No, but I wasn't even saying geopolitics. I was saying there is a lot of political correctness around this subject, which there shouldn't be. In general. One of my pet peeves is that the left and the right are both ignorant. Ignorant. The vast majority of people about science and they use it in different ways. I hate that too. It really drives me nuts. What specifically about that drives you nuts?

[David Kirkpatrick]

GMOs. People that get all hyped up about GMOs are people who think they shouldn't get vaccinated. Those are things on the left or people who don't believe in climate change is caused by humans on the right. But also what about equally idiotic.

[Dimitri]

But here's the thing. What do you think about this? The way the left says, uses the word science and fact does that bother you the way that they use that word?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Sometimes it does.

[Dimitri]

They don't understand what it is they. Right. I understand that I'm using generalities here.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And I'm stereotyping that kind of broad brush statements. I'm a little reluctant.

[Dimitri]

Well, you and I live in New York, so we're surrounded by progressives and we are generally sort of liberal people.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We're surrounded by people, many of whom make excessively credulous left wing generalities that aren't always accurate. I will say that. You know, and GMOs is a good example. There are a lot of people who think, you know, that'll harm you to eat food that's genetically modified, whereas there's zero evidence that has ever been marshaled to show that it's the case. And in fact, if we don't genetically modify foods, well, I'm gonna get a.

[Dimitri]

Lot of shit from the audience for what you just said.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We'll never feed the planet.

[Dimitri]

I think, Jim, if you know what.

[David Kirkpatrick]

To modify food, there's not gonna be enough food to let you know. We.

[Dimitri]

Well, what's.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The people who listen to your podcast who are all basically rich people in the western affluent parts of the world.

[Dimitri]

There are a lot of rich people.

[David Kirkpatrick]

If you want to see a world that's really fair, where the hundreds of millions of people in Africa and India and Southeast Asia and Latin America come up and have a middle class lifestyle, you're gonna have to have some GMOs to feed those people.

[Dimitri]

Who was the guy that told us we're gonna eat crickets? And by the way, John Chambers. John Chambers. So we need. So who is John Chambers?

[David Kirkpatrick]

John Chambers is the longtime CEO of Cisco.

[Dimitri]

Who took Cisco, right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

John Chambers took it from 70 million in revenues to $60 billion in revenues, who turned over the CEO job about two years ago to somebody else and who's about to retire as executive chairman and one of his many investments. He spoke at the Congress.

[Dimitri]

Well, he was laying on the sand.

[David Kirkpatrick]

He spoke at pretty hard in 2017 on Monday morning. And he is concerned about many of these things. And one of his solutions is insect protein because it can be produced for 1/7 the carbon and environmental impact of meat. And it's very high protein and very good.

[Dimitri]

What did our mutual good friend and former guest of Hidden Forces have to say about that that morning? Who came afterwards?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I don't know.

[Dimitri]

Christian Mespia. He mentioned that he's had crickets. I forget what he said exactly, but it was pretty funny. The point was he's Like, I've had them, they're somewhat chewy, and I wouldn't recommend them for large quantities, Something like that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, people have eaten insects throughout human history.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, I know.

[David Kirkpatrick]

What I didn't know until he said it is that actually. Actually, it's a more digestible form of protein than a lot of things we already eat.

[Dimitri]

I would take everything that John's saying with a grain of salt. I mean.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, look into it.

[Dimitri]

I'm gonna have to, because I do actually think that the food process.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I think insect protein's a very good idea myself.

[Dimitri]

Have you ever had any crickets?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I had crickets. I've had ants. I've had grasshoppers.

[Dimitri]

Nothing counts before you were. Not before you were five. Not before you were five.

[David Kirkpatrick]

In China, they eat this stuff. If you're ever in Beijing, they have these, like this straight street food where.

[Dimitri]

They have scorpion kebabs.

[David Kirkpatrick]

They have all kinds of things being roasted there.

[Dimitri]

Can't seem. Did you eat anything from there?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I've tasted some of that when I was in China. Yeah.

[Dimitri]

How did you feel after?

[David Kirkpatrick]

That's where I had a grasshopper, actually. Yeah.

[Dimitri]

How did you. You ate grasshopper.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's good. It's all right.

[Dimitri]

It's all right.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I'm a creature of habit, too. I had a hamburger for lunch, what can I say? And that's probably not environmentally responsible of me. It was grass fed, though, if that sense makes matters.

[Dimitri]

Where did you get it?

[David Kirkpatrick]

From a restaurant.

[Dimitri]

I mean, a restaurant you didn't get it from. Like, what's that burger joint in New York that everyone goes to?

[David Kirkpatrick]

No, I don't want to say. What restaurant? It was a good restaurant.

[Dimitri]

You got to talk a little bit into the mic, David.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You're turning it away from here. It was a good one. You're hearing me. Don't worry. Keep going. Come on. Let's stick with technology.

[Dimitri]

So we talk about climate change, the other thing. So that's your big worry. But what about things like antibiotic resistance, like, you know, super microbes? These are giant nonlinearities that are just sort of like walking.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I'm sure those are worrisome. I don't know that much about that, but, yes, I worry about. I mean, to the degree I know about that, it sounds concerning. Sure.

[Dimitri]

So one of the other big things in the conference that you guys had was stuff on health and food.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We have a lot on health.

[Dimitri]

Right, Health and food. Those sort of two.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, yeah, we didn't have as much about education this time, but that's a big Thing we've talked about much in the past too, and those are sort of three areas where we think technology has the near term promise to have enormous impact. So we like to look at areas where, where technology's positive impact is already being evident and where with the right understanding and efforts, it could be radically accelerated to achieve very positive results for humanity.

[Dimitri]

Isn't that else doesn't help.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Health is the biggest one by far.

[Dimitri]

And that also creates an interesting problem, does it not?

[David Kirkpatrick]

How about. So what's that?

[Dimitri]

Which is that people will be living longer. I mean, the idea is that we all want to live longer and healthier lives. It's a problem.

[David Kirkpatrick]

So you, you think, you think if we improve global health, it's a problem because people will live longer? I mean, that doesn't even occur to me, Dimitri, I gotta tell you.

[Dimitri]

Okay, well, actually it's not that we.

[David Kirkpatrick]

You know, I think more sustainable lifestyles and, you know, maybe we need to have children, you know, at a longer interval. You know, I didn't have my daughter until I was 39 and my wife was 40. So, you know, I did my part there. What can I say?

[Dimitri]

Yeah, but hold on, Wait, wait a minute now. I don't think that's fair. So I'm not saying that improving health is bad. What I'm saying is that on the one hand, we have a society that's built off of traditional biological. What's the terminology? I mean, we've got structural demographic problems because of our social welfare programs. And at the same time, we're making people live longer. People want to be able to live longer. And we have issues about climate change and population growth and all this stuff. I mean, I just don't understand how all this stuff is supposed to work together.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's very hard to engineer everything. Last aspect of society. And I'm not claiming that I know how to do that either, although I think I disagree with some of your premises.

[Dimitri]

I think what's obvious in all this stuff is that it's for a small class of people. Like, at the end of the day.

[David Kirkpatrick]

What is not what is for a small class?

[Dimitri]

All this stuff.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Like if it is, then I might as well just hang it up because I'm not interested in it just being for a small class.

[Dimitri]

Well, neither of us are. But the reality is that the economics drive it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, I'm in the elite, there's no question. That doesn't mean I think all the good stuff should only come to people like me.

[Dimitri]

I agree with you, David. I know you don't feel that way and I feel the same way, but I'm saying is the economic economics drive it that way. The economics are driving us in that direction, man.

[David Kirkpatrick]

To be honest, I'd argue just the opposite.

[Dimitri]

Really?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I think you have a globally rising middle class that is essentially demanding that they be treated with the respect they deserve. And that's, you know, you can see that in all kinds of ways. You see it in trade flows, you see it in, you know, communications, you see it in political power. I mean, look at China's rise. You know, China was a impoverished nation 40 or 50 years ago, like destitute. It was a billion destitute people. And now it is a country of middle class strivers who are hardworking people who want everything we have. And you know, about 4,450 million of them have already gotten it and they're already living a lifestyle that's not that different from ours. I wonder if they're 6 or 700 million to go. But you know, that's just the way it is. People aren't going to just sit back and say, oh, I always lived in a hut, I'm going to stay here. You know, once you get communications to the world and people can see how you and I live, it's all over for, you know, they've got to, they want what we have. They want some version of, you know, longer lives, better health, better nutrition.

[Dimitri]

Are they actually healthier now in China than they were 30 years ago?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, damn right they are.

[Dimitri]

I've read, I've read longitudinal studies that came out of China that showed that they had some of the lowest incidence of cancer and all this other, other stuff. And now with the air pollution, I mean, I'm not sure.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, they're not in poverty. I mean, you say it would have been better to keep living in villages, in huts with no education and subsistence farming.

[Dimitri]

No, but I'm just, what I'm trying to say man, is that it's not like so straightforward. And also I think we don't know what's going to happen in the next 10, 20 years. Right. So all these investments the Chinese have made in building up this economy and polluting their air and being an export driven giant, that may come back to haunt a big portion of that investment, a large portion of, I don't know, I'm just saying, I think I just see much more peril in all of these states.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Well, I don't know who's going to get haunted by that because from the standpoint of the leaders of China if you don't increase the living standards of the people, the Communist Party's not in control anymore, so they don't want a revolution. So they're going to keep working to improve the standard of living of the Chinese people. That's just the way.

[Dimitri]

But there are physical limits to that. They're not in full control of that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Maybe not, but they haven't hit the physical limits yet. Yeah, there's growth is still like two and a half times our growth and it's still pulling more people out of poverty every year.

[Dimitri]

There's a lot of bullshit coming out of China. There's a lot of bullshit numbers and.

[David Kirkpatrick]

A lot of, yeah, they're still pulling a lot of people out of poverty every year. However many bullshit numbers are coming out. They're numbers I wouldn't necessarily trust by any means. But that doesn't undermine the reality that they are having huge success at bringing their country into the world.

[Dimitri]

So what's going to happen when all those jobs get out the of automated?

[David Kirkpatrick]

All what jobs?

[Dimitri]

All those manufacturing jobs in China. They get automated in the next few decades.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I thought it was interesting. One of the real themes of the conference that came up on a number of occasions was how many people are not really worried that the net impact of automation is going to be a diminution of jobs. Many people at the conference said that the net impact of automation and robotics and all these wonderful things or worrisome, scary things could very well be the creation of additional employment. The problem is the transition, because the new jobs are going to require different skills, different capabilities than many of the people who lose their jobs in the old areas that get automated away. So, and it's especially problematic for a country like ours that has such a primitive education system that's basically, you know, designed 100 years ago where we don't have either good liberal arts education or good vocational education, both of which are going to be needed. And to be honest, China's also doing pretty well with some of that stuff. I mean, I don't think I want to live in China. I'm not saying that. But the fact is transitions can be achieved. But, you know, there's a lot of possibility of job creation that goes along with automation in the future. Because the basic thing about automation is it allows you to do more. And as you do more, you do more. Like, for example, in construction, one of the things that was discussed on the, you know, it may be that, you know, what percentage, 40, 50, even 60, maybe more percent of the labor currently required to build buildings is no longer needed because of automation, but maybe because of automation and efficiencies that we're able to achieve, we'll be building 500 times more buildings because that's needed in the world. There are 4 billion people that basically don't have, have housing.

[Dimitri]

You're not worried about population growth?

[David Kirkpatrick]

Actually, I think it's a. Population growth is actually slowing, but that's not related to what I'm saying. The point is, even just with the population we have, because as I said before, they really want places to live and they want, you know, buildings in which to work and all that stuff. There's going to be tons of construction. It's just one example. The, the point is we may be able to build things more efficiently, therefore build a lot more stuff. So even if, you know, on a per building basis, we use less labor, we may still have more jobs. And that kind of logic applies across the economy. It's not a certainty, but their population would be. It's not a certainty. But you know what? I get pissed me off. People talk truck drivers. Oh, their jobs are all going to go away. You know how many truck driving jobs are going begging in the United States right now? They're paying a lot of truck drivers over $100,000 a year and giving them equity in the companies because it's so to get them to come to work. Truck driving is one of the biggest unfilled positions in the United States economy today. Maybe people don't want to do it because it's a little dehumanizing. Maybe automation will make it a little more enjoyable, I don't know. But I'm not going to start worrying about truck drivers going away when people don't want to do the jobs that are out there now. And that's the fact. I think the last figure I saw was that 60,000 open positions for truck drivers in the United States right now.

[Dimitri]

Look, I don't know about truck drivers, I don't know about open position for truck drivers. I know that. And this is not something that you're gonna find statistics for because even all the polls that they do for people on politics are proven completely unreliable. But I think that we've got some major schisms going on in society. And I think technology, that's not something.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I'm gonna argue with.

[Dimitri]

But I think that the way that technology is being applied is a big part of that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It is. I don't disagree. But you know, listen, it's the way it's being applied in a society that has a totally shitty education system. You know, look at all these states where Trump won, and look at the quality of the high schools, the elementary schools, the vocational education. You know, many of those people live in places where they really don't have the resources they need to make the transition to a modern economy. No wonder they'd be pissed off. I'd be pissed off if I was them, too. I'd want change at any cost. I don't hold it against them for voting for Trump or voting for change at any point.

[Dimitri]

I think you're making it for me. It sounds to me like you're making it a lot simpler than it is. Right. To just fix our education system.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's not one thing, it's a whole set of other things.

[Dimitri]

Right. So many things.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Right. But that's one that's very easy to point to. The sheer obvious inadequacy of our educational institutions and their inability to really prepare people for the world we know we're entering into.

[Dimitri]

I agree with that. But even colleges, for example, man, like colleges, where you pay for. For it, they do a shitty job of educating you.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I agree.

[Dimitri]

And even if they didn't do a shitty job, the world is changing so rapidly that it's so difficult to keep up. Like, I just. I think that the headwinds are so great that this is going to require a lot of sort of thinking on our feet.

[David Kirkpatrick]

And it's by what, individuals or individuals?

[Dimitri]

Absolutely individuals.

[David Kirkpatrick]

So we're going to go to a Mad Max scenario, and I'll be out there just thinking on our feet.

[Dimitri]

You're so excited. But what I'm saying is that.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Very pessimistic to me.

[Dimitri]

Yeah. I mean, I am kind of pessimistic. It's a bad thing to say that, right? I am kind of pessimistic. And in fact, with Gavin Schmidt, for example, my concern towards the end of the conversation was, okay, we've talked about this stuff. What are you doing individually, given what you know? I mean, you have access to all this data, information. If anyone should have a serious opinion on the subject, it's you. You're looking at this. You're saying, okay, maybe in 20 years there'll be regular flooding in downtown New York City. Let's say, hypothetically, what are you. Well, we're eating more sustainably. No, no, no. What are you doing? You've got a daughter. What are you doing personally? How are you making changes given what you know? And he had a very good answer. I think an honest answer was a nice answer. Was basically like, I'm not going to get into it here. But point is, he didn't have an answer for what he was going to do individually. But what I think and what this show is really about for me is it's not about collective activism. It's not about let's get everyone to work together so we can solve these communal problems. I do think that's a requirement. I think we need to be able to do that there, that can provide those answers and that kind of motivation better than me. What I think we do need to do is prepare ourselves individually, because like it or not, individually, we're going to have to deal with a lot of the stuff that's coming our way. And whether that's using this show to educate yourself on what's coming your way, technologically, scientifically, ecologically, whatever, or whether it is just eating healthier or whatever it is, you've got to take steps as an individual, first and foremost. Foremost, because I just don't believe that this really. What's the word to describe our shitty government? I find politics in the United States completely disheartening. I mean, look at all the stuff that came out with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the dnc and they were funding the dnc. I mean, it's hard to look at government and say, okay, like, I feel really optimistic about the future.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Right, But I'm not quite sure why you said all that, but.

[Dimitri]

Well, I said it because I'm.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I mean, I disagree with some of that, but I don't. I mean, I'm actually more of an optimist. I think that collective action is necessary. I think all of us have to work together to achieve a positive result for society. And ultimately, I am much more interested in putting my shoulder to the wheel in the context of a movement of people who care than simply sustaining myself in the long run. And I do sustain myself. I have plenty of selfish habits, selfish consumption habits. But one thing, for example, that I think I recently realized, it's going to really be a big change in coming years, is flying is going to become very, very bad politics. Because as climate change gets worse, you know, and we really do recognize the need to reduce carbon emissions, that's the way that individuals most commit contribute to climate emissions is when they fly, it's like 50 times worse than anything else they do, or maybe 100 times worse. It makes driving a car seem like environmentally responsible. So, you know, there's going to be changes and I'll probably have to make changes. I like to travel around just like anybody else. But I do believe that people together are going to be able to adapt. So that's, that's my basic belief. I think we'll adapt. I think we'll have a good society in 50 years. And it's going to take a lot of work. And I'm trying to contribute to that work.

[Dimitri]

Well, you do a great job with that, David. I did enjoy going to Taconomy 20:17. I'll be there for 2018. It's great exposure, great ideas. I actually had a lot of cool conversations. I had some cool conversations on Blockchain with a couple of people, including Kathleen from Tezos in the news. Yeah, look, man, I think we actually disagree on more than I realized. But at the same time, I think that. But I like you, David, because you're a good guy. I was telling your wife on the sideline, I was looking forward to having. What's that? As President Trump ignores climate change, federal disaster planning or rest. What is this? What is this thing? I can't read off. So what did he do?

[David Kirkpatrick]

As President Trump ignores. This is just the New York Times article. As President Trump ignores climate change, federal disaster planners are wrestling with how to prepare communities for even bigger floods. It's obviously a feature story that they're probably promoting on their alert system. But I think it's just funny that came up right, while we were talking about.

[Dimitri]

Well, a lot of stuff comes up with. I mean, there's a lot of crap out in the media and yeah, obviously Trump is Trump. There's not much to say.

[David Kirkpatrick]

The point is floods. We were talking about that there's going to be a lot more floods and we got to start dealing with that and hopefully we'll take the bigger steps to replace. Remediate climate change, slow it down by reducing our output of carbon and methane into the atmosphere. And all these things fit together and you have to think of them all together.

[Dimitri]

So, David, thanks for coming on the show, man. It was great seeing you this weekend. It was great.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Glad you were there, Dimitri. And I'm glad you're coming back next year, too.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, man, I enjoy it.

[David Kirkpatrick]

We love curating these conversations and like I said, we have a certain amount of passion around it, as you can see.

[Dimitri]

You're very passionate. You're a tough interviewee and you're a funny interviewer, by the way. But the audience knows I bring up Techonomy a lot. It's the swankiest conference, period. I love it. And you guys had a great red wine. The cab was really good. It was actually really good.

[David Kirkpatrick]

It's the ideas that count to me since I don't even drink. I don't even know.

[Dimitri]

You don't even drink either, huh?

[David Kirkpatrick]

No.

[Dimitri]

You don't smoke, you don't drink. What are your vices?

[David Kirkpatrick]

I don't know.

[Dimitri]

I mean, you have no vices left.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I have plenty of vices.

[Dimitri]

You must have gone pretty hardcore when you were younger.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I did go hardcore when I was younger.

[Dimitri]

I mean, that's. That's what I'm sensing from you. That's what it sounds like. You went cold turkey.

[David Kirkpatrick]

I was a freaking hippie and a punk both. I went from a hippie stage to a punk putt phase. And believe me, in both those phases I did my share of substances.

[Dimitri]

Yeah, you're still a hippie. You're just. You're just more cleaned up. So, David, thanks again, man, for coming on.

[David Kirkpatrick]

Thanks to me.