AI Innovation, Data Privacy, and the Growing Risk of Economic Inequality – TSG Ep 1000

Hey everyone. Welcome to our special MLK Martin Luther King Day Special edition of Textron Gang. I'm hoping a lot of you aren't working today.

I saw a recent survey in tech. 50% of the folks aren't working today. 25% are kind of on a light day and 25%.

It's sort of a normal day. I hope you're in those 50%, but you're taking time outta your day off. To tune into the gang here and share a little, uh, special edition where we're gonna look at, you know, in many ways, Martin Luther King, what he was talking about in, in the 1960s is no different than what we were talking about in today, right?

And a lot of what he said back then is just as applicable today. So, we're dedicating today's show to, to Martin Luther King. Let me, uh, introduce our, uh, gang members, though, who are gonna be joining us for this special MLK edition.

We've got out in the West Coast looking very dean like himself today, our man in the valley, John Swartz. We've got our late car. He just got in, in here under the wire.

Steven fst, Uh, where's that wire? It's right above your nose. And then joining us is our friend, hope Lynch.

Hope it's great to have you on and up in New York. Mike Ard gang, welcome. So, as I said, this is about Martin Luther King Day and celebration of, of, uh, of his life, his legacy.

And, and as I said in the beginning, it, it's kind of crazy when you think about it, but there was no internet. There was no cell phones. The tech industry wasn't anything like the tech industry is today.

But yet, a lot of what he spoke about is as true today as it was then. And, um, you know, Mike, I'm, I'm gonna ask you to kind of kick off our first segment here, and then I have some quotes of MLK that I'd like to, to go with that. But why don't you kick it off, Mike.

So the first thing that kind of comes to mind is, you know, where are the ethics in this age of AI that we've been talking about for a while? And people are wondering if we're moving a little too fast, and, uh, are we gonna leave a lot of folks behind? And it's becoming a, not a technology conversation, almost a society conversation.

So, um, Alan, I know you've been kind of writing a lot about this over the last few months, but I would put it to you, um, where is that line between what is just something that is technology and it gets used and well, it can be used for good or for evil, or is there some sort of moral obligation that goes with the usage and the adoption of new technology? It's a thin line, that's for sure. You know, let me, let me give a quote from, from, uh, Martin Luther King on this.

He said, our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Now, as I say, you wanna substitute extreme wealth and power for, for guided missiles, because today so much more power is projected by, by wealth and technology than it is by pure military Mike.

But you're right, Mike, I have written a lot about this, and it bothers me in that I, i, I don't think we are always following the most ethical course. And we, we put profit above all else. Um, but I, I'm not the only one.

Stephen, I know you, I have a kindred spirit there in you as well. So what do you think? Yeah, I, I think that if Dr.

King were still alive, and it's too bad he isn't, because it would be, uh, phenomenal to have a voice like that in modern times. I think he'd have a quite a lot to say. I mean, if, if we want to turn this toward the tech industry, um, you know, the, the incredible, uh, inequality of, uh, technology both internationally as well as, you know, domestically in, in developed countries, is it's pretty astonishing the ways that, um, this is being deployed.

The ways that it is changing society, the attention or lack of attention being paid to various groups is just, uh, kind of mind boggling. It's like nobody was listening. Um, and the ways that this technology could be used to improve people's lives, but isn't, is another thing I think that he would have a lot to say about Agreed.

John, you're out in the valley, and I don't wanna point fingers too hard, but there is this mindset out in the valley that says, you know, just tear down everything and Yep. And we'll be damned, and let's not worry about the consequences kind of vibe that seems to be coming outta, um, I don't know, Palo Alto and Sandhill Road and all those VCs are kind of banging that drum. And then there's, you know, almost, I don't wanna call it a cult, but there's definitely a mindset out there that kind of says, you know, this is the way we're going and society can figure it out later, but Right, right.

Build things as fast as Yes, exactly. Build things as fast as possible. They break, fix 'em later, worry about the consequences later.

You know, it's funny. Um, so Mark, mark Zuckerberg famously has always talked about that principle and essentially worked out for him pretty well. Um, maybe Apple's an exception, but apple's an exception to a lot of things that go on here.

But there is like that kind of mentality of, uh, grab as much as you possibly can. Don't worry about the consequences. And I think that has predated back even 10 years when Jesse Jackson had a, uh, famous push out here in the Valley for, uh, addressing the digital divide.

A DEI. In fact, when I was working at USA today, we did a panel with him at Stanford where we had e uh, executives from Apple, Google, Twitter, and I believe I wanna say Facebook, and all of them were just hired. All these folks were just hired to address all these issues.

And I gotta be really blunt with you, um, within a couple of years. And they were all gone. They all had left on bad terms.

And it was interesting because the timeframe I'm talking about is when they did this push, it was 2014 when Obama was in office by 20 16, 20 17, they were all gone because somebody else was in office. And, um, we've been there since. And I, and I remember getting in arguments with Mark Andreessen about this.

He just dismissed this. But then again, he has a long history of saying really racially insensitive things. And I, I will, I will say that over and over again, he's been proven.

Um, it's, it, it's too bad. But you're right, Mike, you point the finger here and it's, it's something that people here have to look at. But again, they're so obsessed with making money as fast as possible and grabbing powers fast as possible.

Everything else is secondary. John, I have a, a question since you are, you know, the West Coast correspondent, um, so California past, um, AB three 16, right? I think it took effect January 1st that says, you can't argue in court any court that something that AI does is just the ai and that the organization itself is not responsible.

Right? So I, I just wonder how, how sticky will that actually be? Yeah, that's a good, that's such a great point.

Hope, because I was thinking about this as well. We, I think on a show last week, we were talking about whether AI as a person or a machine, and I think Like corporations are considered people. Exactly.

You just read my mind. Exactly. And I'm wondering, is there going to be a case that involves this law where in a sense, the person behind the AI or the AI itself is gonna be blamed?

And I think that's gonna be such a precedent setting event, um, and it's gonna happen. Uh, it's, but I'm glad you brought that up because I had, I was thinking about that before we went on. Well, I, I question whether that's superseded By the executive order that, uh, states can't legislate anything with ai, that it's being carved out for the only federal, Right?

Yeah. So Let me, let me tell you a story that, about that, because it turns out that neither party is very good in this issue, no matter how you look at it. 'cause mm-hmm.

I was talking to a consultant here in New York last Friday. It'll be on a future episode of Techstrong ai. And she was pointed out like we in New York passed this loft called the Raise Act and had all these stipulations for the usage of ai.

Mm-hmm. And then the governor signed, said Bill three months later, but she pointed out chapter by chapter, the bill that signed did not resemble anything that was actually passed by the state Senate. And basically all of it had been gutted because there was all this backroom lobbying going on, and basically, a democratic governor signed a raise act, took credit for trying to protect people for ai, and then it turns out that, you know, the ACT itself is now virtually meaningless.

And it just seems we have a total absence of political leadership on the left or the right when it comes to this stuff. You, one of the things, Mike, I'm sorry to interrupt. Um, one of the things No, go ahead, Frank, is that the, both of these parties don't understand tech.

They never have. That's why they're so bad at, at passing legislation or, or even passing it, period. On a federal level, forget it on a state level.

There are some pockets of folks who know what they're talking about, but by the time the lobbying efforts are over the laws, the the bills are watered down. Um, a very strong lobbying effort by, by tech. It's, they're very effective at this.

And the politicians really don't understand. And in a sense, I think they are sometimes compromised. I'm not, I probably shouldn't go into that, but I think they're compromised based on where they're based and who they're constituents are, and whether they have investments in some of these companies, which is a real thing.

So I'll, I'll pass It. Yeah, no, we, we need reform in that. But let, let's get back to Dr.

King and, and the root of the issue here, and it's around ethics mm-hmm. Around doing the right thing to quote Spike Lee. Right.

Um, you know what, let me go, I'm gonna give you some law school stuff. In law school, they have the concept of mens rea, right? What your mind, do you have a guilty mind?

Do you have a mind? In other words, did you do this on purpose willfully? Mm-hmm.

Or was it negligent? You didn't realize it. A reasonable person may not have done that, but it was, it was just negligent.

It wasn't sorta purposeful, willful. It's very, you know, at this point, we've sold the guardrails and told ourselves it'll be okay. This isn't, you know, something is going to give, when we talk about income disparity and security around ai, which we're gonna talk about and, and some of the other things that are ailing us as a society in a civilization today with our latest tech.

But the point of it is, is when the stuff does hit the fan at this point, it's very hard for this tech bro culture. And John, you talked about what's going on, Mike, you referenced it. Hope you referenced it.

It's a tech bro culture, right? They overwhelmingly support a lot of what the administration wants and does. It's this tech bro culture.

Are they gonna have the nuts to stand up and say, this one's on us. Yeah, we were wrong. You know, can I, can I, um, so when you mention the tech bro culture, I think of them also as politically expedient.

They do whatever benefits them. So there's the infamous photo, and I brought this up before. There's the infamous photo of, um, Obama being flanked by Jobs and Zuckerberg, where he is in their, in their realm.

He is one of their advocates. He is very strong on the tech side. And they, and, and they played it, they played it really well.

And then he flashed forward to Trump, and they're doing the same thing. And I think to them, it really doesn't matter. They're with the exception of perhaps Tim Cook.

And I even started, I having my doubts about him too now, is they just play whatever the, whatever the party in office, the office, the, the, the party that's in Power wants, and they play the game of, they manipulate these guys so well, and they are manipulated in turn. And I think that's what's happening. So for instance, if we fast forward to a couple of years to a new administration, perhaps it's a Democratic administration, you're gonna change your tune again and try to whitewash the past.

Stephen, what would Dr. King say about the tech bros and, and this headlong rush, you know, damn the torpedoes and damn the common guys? Well, I not sure I can put, uh, words into his mouth.

Uh, though it seems in our current culture of carelessness, people do often, uh, put words into others' mouths. Uh, but I think that if we study what he had to say about things, I think that he would have some pretty big questions about what we're doing with AI and with technology. Um, you know, he would question, I think whether, uh, AI serves human dignity, uh, whether, as you said, whether our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.

I think he would ask what it means for marginalized people and inequality. Uh, you know, he talked about what he called the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism. I imagine that he would have quite a lot to say, maybe even a, a fourth triplet when it came to sort of our techno, uh, utopian world.

And I think the biggest thing that he would wonder is about, uh, justice, because I think it's important to remember that King wasn't about equality per se. He was really about justice. This was a religious person as well as a philosopher.

And he would ask whether the current sort of techno, uh, utopianism focused on, um, efficiency above all else, and maybe objectivity, which is how they like to phrase it, is really, um, going to serve the needs of justice, or whether it's going to be something that would be more, um, you know, anti, you know, anti justice moving us further away from that. So, I, I think that, uh, these are all things that we hear, but as I said, I feel like our current culture is, um, just anti thoughtful. You know, it's like we have this, this, uh, focus on, uh, in the name of objectivity and in the name of, you know, efficiency.

We, we don't want to ask ourselves these questions, and in fact, we want not to ask ourselves these questions. Hey, Steven, let me give you a shout out here. So while you were doing that, I, uh, actually went up to, uh, Gemini, and I asked it, what would Dr.

King say about ai? And sure enough cited, you know, while it said that Dr. King wasn't around for this AI stuff, he probably would've equated it to militarism and materialism.

So 10 points for you. Well, uh, there we go. There's a great example of, uh, ai, uh, confidently putting words into someone's mouth.

I'm sure that if you ask, we'll create a video of him saying that. What, you know, since you say that, I don't, I don't know if any of you recall, but when Open AI released Sora, right? Mm-hmm.

Everyone started making, everyone making videos, AI videos of various people, including Martin Luther King, uh, some with him eating, uh, seafood with Malcolm X, other things. But his daughter put out a statement that says, you know, please stop doing this. So OpenAI, um, they responded and said, you know, we're gonna pause MLK generations while we strengthen guardrails.

But this actually is an example of how ethics around this are working in practice today. In certain cases, they ship the product without the controls deploy first, right? Then, uh, harmful or disrespectful content went viral.

No one intervened harm occurred, even, you know, as it wasn't a living person, but to, um, his, his children and his descendants. And then the controls were only added after there was, you know, an outcry and a complaint. Right?

Right. No, because we live in a running man. Did you ever watch the movie The Running Man?

Yes. We live in a Running Man society, right? Yeah.

If everybody's going to get the best TV ratings or the highest popularity in the polls, right? Mm-hmm. That's what gets, that's what gets their attention.

I don't know if it's the Hu Hunger Gate Running Man, one of these things. It's su subsequently open ai, uh, signed the deal, uh, with Disney around Soar. Isn't that correct?

Yeah. Their content, they Learned their lesson, I guess, didn't they? But the guardrails that they put in place aren't worth the damn, I mean, they're just easily end run.

They're not rail guardrails. Right. It depends on how you ask sometimes.

Exactly. But we, we need, we need to keep moving, guys. We're, we're 18 minutes into this one, and we gotta jump to the next one.

Our, our next segment is really about the ai, the so-called AI economy. And make no mistake, it's an AI economy where we're spending trillions in CapEx, trillions in CapEx that are generating maybe thousands of jobs. That seems like a disconnect.

We've spoken about that here, right? 2 billion data center that generates 37 full-time jobs. Um, again, this is the kind of thing Dr.

King wrote a lot about, spoke a lot about right, income disparity, the dignity of having a job, the dignity of being able to earn a living. Right? Not everyone maybe is going to, you know, be in the top 1% or even top 5%, but where it, it just seems, and I think, and I'll, I'll say it, and you guys can disagree.

I think that's the, this is the single biggest issue confronting everyday folks when they hear the term ai, they cringe. Mm-hmm. They equate it to a loss of jobs.

And let's, when you Think about play does favor capital over labor, though, I mean, um, the IMF, they did a study and they said, um, based on their study, AI adoption increases wage and wealth in inequality, right? And the returns flow to a very small group of high capital investors. You know, when they, when we looked at, uh, the, the difference between the everyday worker and the CEO of the company they worked for maybe even a couple of decades ago, that there, there was a, there was a big gap.

I don't know. I, there was a number, I, I think I, I read in a book recently where it was somebody like five times, now we're at, we're talking about 40, 50, a hundred times, and it's just gonna get wider and wider. And I think that when they start building these data centers, and they will, and we create these choice of dollars, and when this happens and few jobs are merited, there's gonna be even more outcry, especially among the people who voted in this administration thinking they were gonna be getting manufacturing jobs and having a more affordable life.

I think it's just gonna be more pronounced in there. So I have friends who are worried about that, but at the same time, they also have 4 0 1 Ks that are heavily invested in Nvidia, and they kinda look at that and they go, wow, I'm making money on this. This is great.

And I'll come full circle on this. 'cause there is this conversation going on about whether we're gonna need this, uh, universal basic income thing, which oddly enough is something that Dr. King speculated on many, many decades ago.

But how to fund that. Well, the only way to fund that in my mind, is for the US government to become a bigger shareholder in the technology companies that are creating all this stuff to, so at that point, then everybody's kind of an owner of these companies. But, you know, if you look at that, that's a form of socialism.

So I don't know how this goes, but Alan, what do you think? You know, Mike, I don't disagree with you. I, I, you and, and people you know, who are more popular than Mike Ard and Alan Shimmel have speculated on this.

No, There's nobody like that. Yeah. There's a few, a handful at most, Stephen, but, you know, like Elon Musk, right?

Elon Musk says, with AI and robotics and everything, it's gonna be the end of poverty, right? The end of poverty. We're all not gonna have to work.

So let me get this straight. We're not gonna work, but we're gonna end poverty. And it'll be like, you know, heaven on earth, it sounds like, you know, we should be looking for Jesus in Jerusalem or something.

Is he also, is he also talking about creating these jobs that we still don't know what these jobs will be, these AI related jobs that are gonna create this new nirvana? He is just saying, there's no jobs, man. Everybody's just, no, he's Saying no jobs.

It's like a Star Trek. You know? It'll, it'll be the current state, right?

It'll be a releveling of what it means to not have a job. Well, in that case, maybe it is, right? But, but it, you know, it begs for it like a basic income and you could go pursue your, your higher ambitions.

But you, you know, what's interesting is during Dr. King's time, he very clearly, and I have the quote here, the problem of race is inseparable from the problem of economic injustice. Because to be, to be, and no disrespect to anyone, but to be black in 1950s America or sixties, America made it.

Triply is hard. 10 times is hard to be economically empowered. I don't think we're quite as bad as we were then, though we're far from perfect today.

There's no doubt about it, right? But today, I think that line cuts across race. And we also gotta talk about gender, right?

We gotta talk about where you live, even within just the US itself. Um, I, I think we more than ever, and and AI is accelerating this, the, the income disparity and the, the gap between the have and the have nots is, could ultimately rip this country apart. Well, you know, and sadly, what brought Dr.

King to Memphis in April, 1968, was the garbage worker strike. Yeah. And that was his concern over jobs.

And that was what happened. And you know what the, Sorry. Well, part of the reason that we're not seeing as much outrage just yet is that a lot of these jobs that are gonna be eliminated in the short term and people's minds, they're white collar jobs.

They're kind, I like the tech is gonna wipe out, you know, clerks and all this other stuff, or whatever it is. But if you look at where this is going with robotics and with speech interfaces, the next big wave of jobs being wiped out by AI will be blue collar jobs. And so we'll become a much bigger issue.

I was talking to this company about, you know, all the people who take your orders at Starbucks are gonna be replaced by a speech interface with ai. Oh, it, it's happening at, it's happening at fast food places. They go to lifestyle, good places.

They, Hey, you know what? Amazon, and Amazon, I hate, hate to break this to you, but Amazon's looking at robotics on a massive scale within their warehouses and manufacturing and delivery. And they're starting to lay people off.

So it's happening. Microsoft is gonna do the same. Hope you, you were gonna say something?

Oh, just that I think, I think it's hit a a point in society where more people are concerned about AI now, because it's more visible. People are seeing how you can create art. You can write, you can do all of these things that are more tangible and more relatable to more people.

But AI has been causing harm for multiple years, right? Um, uh, AI takes on the ethics of the people who build it, right? There is not really much way around that in any organizations, but people who have been denied loans, been denied housing, been denied jobs for many, many, many years into the past.

This, this cuts across everyone. But now it has reached a point where it feels to more people, like it touches them. It's not as invisible as it as it once was.

So perhaps that will cause change. But again, you know, how much, how much pain do we all endure before that change happens? I, if AI takes on the ethics of the people who built it, hope, um, that doesn't sound like a very optimistic projection.

Um, Right. I'll point out that one. Um, one of the great modern theorists on AI is not, is Tim, that Gabriel, who actually was involved early on mm-hmm.

With the creation of this technology and now is outspoken. In fact, she's one of the people I think that most closely mirrors, uh, Dr. King's concern about the, the fact that AI is causing, uh, job loss.

Uh, she's spoken about the invisible labor, you know, the third world content moderation problem, that sort of thing. You know, the issues of, uh, lack of access and exploitation of people in the south, uh, job displacement, all of these things I think that Dr. King would've had a lot to say about, but to the point that Mike made earlier, why aren't people saying this?

Well, to quote, uh, Upton Sinclair, one of my famous or fa favorite quotes out there, uh, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. And I think that that's the, the situation that we are in, in a bubble economy when so many people are economically motivated mm-hmm. To get on board.

Because as Mike pointed out, so much of our money is dependent on the success of this project, that we aren't willing to have these conversations. Now, some people are, but many people are not willing to have these conversations. And I think that that's, uh, detrimental and concerning for all of us.

I'll go one step further. It's not the algorithm. It's the data itself reflects the biases and the injustices that have been going on for decades.

And the algorithm is just surfacing it in a way that we can all see it and experience it more readily. But, you know, if, uh, it's not the AI that came up with a recommendation to say that let's not give this, uh, person a loan because they live in this neighborhood. It was, that's been redlined into the loan process for decades.

It's just been automated. Well, You know, who would agree with you on that is Elon Musk, which is why he created an alternative set of facts to train the new GR on, because he felt exactly the same way that this core information was biased against what he saw was the worldview. And in his point of view, the bias was leftward.

No, there you go. Are They, you know what they say? Fact History is written by the winners.

Isn't that lovely? You know, who, who's, who's writing this history would remain still to be seen. So let it be written.

Um, look, it, it, we could argue about this and talk about it all day, but the fact is, as we sit here, that disparity gap continues to grow. And in a country where we have mass men pulling people over because maybe they speak with an accent or their skin's brown and people are protesting by the thousands, this, this isn't something that's going away. I I just, you know, I feel like we probably are closer now to what Dr.

King faced in the sixties than we have been in. What for me, was the whole, my, the entirety of my life, right? I was a very young boy when Dr.

King was assassinated. And I, I always felt like the arc we were making progress, positive progress in this. And, and, um, I'm not so quite sure we are anymore.

I'm just not, not to be pessimistic, but, You know, can I, maybe, maybe there is a silver lining in all this fear of ai. Maybe it, it's lighting a fire under people and bringing to bear some of the things that they've been thinking subconsciously now it's affecting them directly. And so they're acting.

I mean, there, there is a, there is a very thriving protest movement now, and I wonder if that kind of, in a sense, fuels the anger, the anxiety, the, The, that I think it fuels anger and anxiety. And that brings up another issue that we can talk about during this segment, which is, you know, technology was supposed to bring us closer. All of us tech folk, we talk about community, we love community, yet we're more alone than ever.

We have no one to talk to. But some ai right? Talks back to us and maybe tells us what we want to hear or whatever.

And it tells us what to do, right? What No, what we should be doing, right? So is that another failure of our technology that in instead of building communities, we we're, we're more islands than ever?

Yeah, it is, it is sad, isn't it that, um, the technology that, you know, when I first got onto this train, I was excited to finally find peers, people who were excited about, I don't know, uh, German industrial music and lemurs and role playing games. And now, uh, people have communities of people who believe that the world is flat and birds have been replaced by robots. Um, you know, there's, I guess there's a community for everyone.

Um, and unfortunately that amplifies and makes, you know, really unusual, uh, Beliefs seem maybe mainstream. You know, that, that's why my job, I remember when, when the Macintosh came out, it was the computer for the rest of us, this whole idea that we're, we're gonna be inclusive. And this, this kind of, like this Hindu LSD vision that jobs had from his wanderings, you know, he kind of tried to apply it to technology, and we thought the same about the internet.

And may, maybe at an early time when we, in our naive stage, we thought social media would connect us to people and drive a deeper relationship. And in a sense, what it has done, I think is isolated, is more than ever Driven a wedge instead of, uh, driven connection. But it is, but it is partly, um, maybe diverging, but maybe on point.

It's partly due to the easy amplification, right? One person can make a post on threads, someone who is not famous, no one has ever known, but it can generate thousands of comments, thousands of likes. And that person, no one knows what they do for a living, who they are, whether they are who they say they are, but everyone engages with it, gets angry or inspired or whatever, right?

There is an, an, an outside influence now of, of one voice for good or bad. Agreed. Hey, we, we need to hop into the next segment here.

And, and you know, we, calling this one, security is a civil right? I, I did some shimmy quotes on this, right? You know, we've gotta stop lying to ourselves.

Real security on, on an organizational basis seems to be only affordable by the Fortune 500. And that doesn't make cybersecurity protection. It's a country club, right?

Because we're build if we're building a safer digital world, or are we just building a gated community with better firewalls for those who can afford 'em? And, and you know what security, to paraphrase, Hillary Security is a human right, or could, should be a human right. And we all should be entitled to some modicum of digital security as well as perhaps physical.

Steven, I'll throw it to you first. Sorry, I am woefully unprepared To, okay, you know what, think about it. We'll come back to Mike.

He's got his hand up Mike Hand. I'll pause it the following. So the original sin was the creation of the internet protocol without any consideration for security.

So we wound up wrapping around all this additional gateways and everything else around it to make it secure because bad people were using it to attack us. But now we're also using those same security protocols and the same concepts to well enforce some level of, what do you wanna call it? Privacy or censorship or whatever it is.

But that's how we create these little guarded communities around things. And then that's how we wind up not talking to each other and building a global community because, well, we have the great firewall of China all because we didn't think through the fact that we needed maybe better security when this whole thing started. So let me get this straight.

The Irish Catholic is blaming it on original sin. There you go, boy, somewhere in Cardinal Spelman. They're really, they're saying that's our, that's our Mike Baard.

There's our Mike Baard. All those years were not wasted. Sister Thomas, very happy Uhhuh Sean.

Hope. What do you think about security as a civil right? Um, I think we are at a point now that that is, I feel it's, it's not really considered as one.

And it's, and by the powers that be right, it's, it's impinged on more than ever because, um, CI sing, right? Cisa, their budget was cut. That money was shifted over to ice.

Ice is using that money to buy in part cell phone tracking data so that they can follow people, find people, they're scraping social media. Um, so basically private citizens are being stalked by the government just in case you are someone that, that they want to target, right? So me being stalked by my government does not feel like, um, security is a civil right.

You know, there are more, the more, more cameras in, in, in, um, operation now than ever before where ba basically, this is like a surveillance state. Mm-hmm. I mean, I think we're all considered data and the companies want to get as much, they wanna squeeze as much data out of us as possible.

So therefore, I feel as if I'm a target. I think we all are targets, not in a nefarious way, but in effect, they're trying to get inside our heads to try to sell more product to us, or try to exploit us. I mean, this, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's so strange.

I mean, we're, we're, it's like 1984 on steroids and AI's gonna just accept, accentuate things. And, um, How do You reconcile the following though? So common law says, you know, your house is your castle, and everything that goes on in there should be private.

But everything that goes on outside your door is in the public domain. So if someone, if you're on the internet, a public resource, and you are, uh, you know, bouncing around on this public recourse thing, your neighbors can see it. And so can the local city officials and everybody else.

What makes that, um, any more illegal in, I I, I, I am going to disagree, Mike, your right to privacy doesn't end at your front door. All Right? Now, the current Supreme Court has real issues with right to privacy, right?

We've seen that in their finding in their recent case law. But there was one time in, on a place, in a place called Camelot, there was a constitutionally recognized right to privacy. And that right to privacy was extended beyond the four walls of your domicile.

It it was inherent in your humanity as a person. You have a right to privacy. So you're gonna, you're wrapping that up under what life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

'cause last time I checked the founding fathers didn't say squat about privacy specifically. Well, the, you know, uh, I'm not gonna play law school professor, but there's a, there is a long lineage of case law around a right to privacy is being in, in included within your basic human rights, you know, life, liberty, and pursuit to happiness. Yes.

Un unfortunately, we live in the Truman Show. This is, that's really happening. That movie was so prescient.

True, true. Everything we do or say, that's why, in a sense, I mean, almost, I almost kind of, uh, create a, a, a walls around myself sometimes in social media. I almost go outta my way to, to not share many, many things I do anymore.

It's like a tracking system. And I have friends who post things about what they do every day, so I know exactly where they are, what they're doing at that very moment. And, uh, there was a time where I probably wouldn't have objected to that.

But given the circumstances and the times in which we live in now, I, I think I should err on the, to being careful about, And I, and I will also say that, um, as with, as with all things speaking, only as a person who lives in and the rules of the United States, right? 2018 Supreme Court, um, carpenter, the United States, getting historical cell phone records from carriers requires a warrant. Court recognized that everybody was like, okay, so now that a loophole is being exploited, there is a data broker industry, $300 billion a year.

Um, there are companies that aggregate location signals and will sell them them. So as some people have said, if there's a particular crime you want to commit, you probably need to drive an old car and not take your cell phone with you because everything is connected to something. And those, those violations of privacy are often tied back to, um, federal government, local government and precedent, not necessarily to corporations that are accessing and selling the information.

But, you know, I think, so I'm a big believer in the social contract theory mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Of, you know, modern civilization.

I think people by their actions have accepted that acquiesce to it. And to me, it's a case. I forget to quote Benjamin Franklin, if you are willing to trade something for something, you have neither Mike, you probably know this one.

It Is, um, if you're willing to trade liberty for security, you have neither Right. And or security for liberty. You have neither.

And I, I think there is some of that certainly going on. Steve, we gave you, Steven, we gave you a chance to stew for a while. Any thoughts you want to add?

Thank you. Uh, yeah, I would just want, I would just want to kind of respond to some of the things that hope said and kind of amplify them, because I feel like that's, that's really the, the key here. Um, I think it's ironic that we don't have an explicit right to privacy in the United States.

In fact, um, we have legal rights to security that are far stronger than our legal rights to privacy. Um, you know, that there are specific, uh, national and state laws relating to information security, and there are not relating to, uh, general personal privacy. Um, but, you know, getting back to the whole, you know, Martin Luther King subject here, um, you know, one of the things that he famously said, uh, was that a a right delayed is a right.

Denied. And I think that what he was trying to tell us there, and I think that maybe this is applicable to the state of security as a right, is that essentially if we are willing, as you say, to give these things up, then we are, you know, or to delay them or to say it's not expedient to enforced copyright when we're trying to build ai, or if it's not expedient to, uh, keep, uh, bad actors from, um, accessing our information or to keep data brokers from sharing information, then, um, we've essentially given up those rights. You know, we've essentially said we don't have a right.

If we're willing to allow things, you know, as to your point about liberty. And if we're willing to allow things to happen, then we are giving those things up. Yeah.

Yep. Guys, we gotta keep it moving and wrap this one up. I, I want to, this is not on our script.

I'm gonna throw it out to the panel and interested in your thoughts. You know, the, when you look back over the history of the United States, it's remarkable. Small group, 13 colonies, ragtag army took on the greatest power of its time and won their independence.

And it was because whether you believe in God or some other, or no di at, uh, men emerged, men of their time emerged to lead the founding fathers, George Washington, right? Extraordinary men. Abraham Lincoln at the time of the Civil War, uh, uh, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, right?

We, we have been a blessed nation in the sixties, Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, though, you know, all three of them lives ended too short. Where's the next Dr. King, where's the next Abraham Lincoln?

Where's the next great American leader? You know, I Think, or do we not need one? I Don't know.

I think those people, I think those people don't go away. I think those people do exist, but in today's attention economy, it's harder for those people to service. Yeah.

And exert the type of influence that there was then, there were maybe three channels on television there. Yeah. Everyone had a newspaper and magazines and reading.

Actual reading was, was more of a pastime. But now if you don't capture someone within the first few seconds, they may not hear the rest of anything you are saying. So getting a platform that is large enough and durable enough for that person to make an impact, I think is a lot harder.

Yeah, absolutely. For European Union. Fair enough.

Fair enough. What, what, what hope that, what hope that is like that there, there are more, there are just as many of these folks, we just don't dunno who they are. They're on a grassroots level.

They're not on a huge national breakout level. I mean, like, as you said there before, there were three major networks. Now there are thousands of channels.

There are opportunities. They're out there, they're doing podcasts, they're doing substack, they're out in the field, they're, they exist. We just don't see them on a large mega scale.

And each to Kate hope's point as well, I mean the, the, the, the eco information economy is so fragmented that I think people would say that there are great theorists out there and great leaders out there who are saying, you know, great things. Uh, and unfortunately though, the information bubbles mean that some people are out there saying, you know, uh, somebody like, um, Donald Trump is a great philosopher and leader who's, you know, driving or The no no peace prize. Somebody might say, You know, no, no, no, it's, uh, you know, a OC or it's maybe Bernie Sanders or somebody like that.

Um, you know, some people who are extremely plugged in, uh, like me might say, no, no, no. I mean, I love what Ken White is doing with Pope Hat. You know, I mean, things like that, you know, we got all these, these people that are influencing us, but there's just not that sort of breakthrough ability to pop all these bubbles and get us all on board.

And that's challenging. Is that gonna get any better or worse going forward? 'cause it seems like we're seeing more centralization of the communication channels.

No, I, I think that even with, even with that, I think, you know, let's go back to the, to the AI topic, the algorithm, um, what you engage with, you get more of, right? Um, years ago, it wasn't about engagement, it was just, this is the discourse, right? And, and you hear it.

Maybe if you, if you want, or if you don't want it, it's there. Whereas now it is easy to turn away and find a perspective that echoes your own. You don't have to change unless there is just some immovable force that is going to force change on you.

I'm waiting for the, I'm waiting for the anonymous moment. Remember when the book anonymous? Yeah.

Those, those guys be given. Yeah. I'm expecting, I'm expecting somebody to, through AI to create a book that's a major breakthrough, and everyone's gonna wonder who did it.

And it's gonna circle back to some sort of weird AI voice. I don't, I think that the six digital representations of myself will engage with the world while I'm sitting in my backyard watching the two channels. I can still get with my rabbit ears.

You know, he might be AI right now. Alan, you might be. He might already be.

He's a plant. He's a plant. Hey gang, thank you for joining us here on, on this holiday.

We appreciate, I know it's a, it's a day you want, maybe you wanna spend with family or enjoying or reflecting, but I'm glad you came around here to reflect. We hope you've watched oh, you've enjoyed this reflection and kind of juxtaposition a bit of what MLK would do if you were here today and what it means. Um, we, I don't know if we're gonna have, I think that's all we have today.

We're not publishing on any of our sites, so there's no new news up there. I don't think we have a text on TV feed going today. But Stephen hope, John, Mike, thank you.

Thank you for watching. We'll be back tomorrow live at 10:00 AM for regular text on gang, if there is such a thing as a regular Dex Extra gang. Um, but until then, enjoy your holiday and, uh, you know what you've gotta respect even after all these years, he's still relevant.

Uh, Dr. King, bye-bye everyone.