Speaker 1: Sleep Walkers is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Unusual Productions. So I mean, let's just ground the conversation
Speaker 1: for a second. There's two point two billion people who
Speaker 1: use Facebook. It's about the size of Christianity. There's one
Speaker 1: point nine billion people who use YouTube. It's about the
Speaker 1: size of Islam. That's Tristan Harris. When I walk into
Speaker 1: that Facebook room, you know, I'm walking into a room
Speaker 1: that's designed to never make me leave with a thousand
Speaker 1: engineers using supercomputers to calculate the perfect seductive thing to
Speaker 1: put in front of my brain. And Tristan knows a
Speaker 1: thing or two about seduction. I was a design ethosistic
Speaker 1: Google and have spent a decade understanding some of the
Speaker 1: invisible forces that shape the way that we see and
Speaker 1: make sense of the world and choose in the world.
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering they teach this stuff in school, well,
Speaker 1: they do at Stanford. I studied at this lab called
Speaker 1: the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab that teaches engineering students about
Speaker 1: the entire discipline of persuasion. Everything you know how to
Speaker 1: persuade dogs with clicker training, So click click, you know
Speaker 1: you've got the food. Click click, reward all the way
Speaker 1: to casino design and slot machines, and how do you
Speaker 1: change the lighting to get people to buy things? And
Speaker 1: then you know supermarket design and choice architecture and putting
Speaker 1: the candy in the final aisle, because that's the thing
Speaker 1: that gets you to buy. Tristan and his classmates used
Speaker 1: what they learned at the Persuasive Technology Lab to define
Speaker 1: how we live online. My partners in that class, and
Speaker 1: two thousands of sex at Stanford were the founders of Instagram.
Speaker 1: Half my friends built some of these products and then
Speaker 1: to the like button. Think about that for a moment.
Speaker 1: The people who designed the apps we use the most
Speaker 1: learned how to make them as appealing as possible by
Speaker 1: borrowing the science that trains dogs and gets people hooked
Speaker 1: on gambling. And now all of that is baked into
Speaker 1: a device that's basically become an extension of our body.
Speaker 1: We check our phones about eighty times a day, that's
Speaker 1: the conservative number. And you know their incentive is to
Speaker 1: calculate what is the perfect most seductive thing I can
Speaker 1: show you next to the most seductive red color for
Speaker 1: that notification, or the most seductive video that you know
Speaker 1: you can't help but want to watch next. At a
Speaker 1: time when technology is changing faster than our ability to
Speaker 1: understand it and seeping into nearly every corner of our lives,
Speaker 1: what kind of murky future are we sleepwalking into? What
Speaker 1: can we do to take back some control? And how
Speaker 1: is emerging technology changing our lives for the better. This
Speaker 1: is Sleepwalkers, So welcome. I'mrs and I'm doing this show
Speaker 1: because I'm fascinated with how we relate to the technologies
Speaker 1: that they're changing our lives, whether they end up being
Speaker 1: something like Dr Frankenstein's Monster or ai craft it seltzer Water.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we look at how our technology gets
Speaker 1: into our heads and we take on some distinctly modern monsters,
Speaker 1: from the trick to successful online dating to deterring potential
Speaker 1: terrorists with invisible technology. And I'll have some company along
Speaker 1: the way. Hi. That's Kara Price. She's my friend and
Speaker 1: she hosted a show called Talk Nerdy to Me for
Speaker 1: the Huffington Post. Um. So, I saw this article on
Speaker 1: the Times, the New York Times about how all of
Speaker 1: these Silicon Valley exacts are taking away their kids screen time,
Speaker 1: you know, telling their kids nanny's that the nanny can't
Speaker 1: use screens. And there's actually this quote from Mark Zuckerberg's
Speaker 1: former executive assistant, this woman Athena Tivaria. She says, I
Speaker 1: am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is
Speaker 1: wreaking havoc on our children. Is that like the devil
Speaker 1: is in the details, or is it like the devil
Speaker 1: who lives in hell? No? I think it's the red
Speaker 1: devil who wears no clothes that guys in the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know what he does. It leaves people in temptation.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's the devil's show. That's really right, and
Speaker 1: it is have you ever seen a child on an iPad?
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen me? Well, have you ever seen me? Yes? Mesmerized,
Speaker 1: clickity clack, don't come back, actually showing Pocca, who's the
Speaker 1: first president of Facebook, said God only knows what it's
Speaker 1: doing to our children's brains. Got on the devil. Here's
Speaker 1: all of these technology executives who have built basically what
Speaker 1: we use every day to do everything from being in
Speaker 1: touch with our friends to meeting our loves to getting
Speaker 1: from A to B. And suddenly they're saying, well, you guys,
Speaker 1: go ahead, but not for my kids. Yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that this feels very similar to the
Speaker 1: conversation we have surrounding you know, junk food, sugar, tobacco, alcohol,
Speaker 1: that these are things that your parents are supposed to
Speaker 1: protect you from up until a certain point, whether it's
Speaker 1: when you go to college or whatever. And now our
Speaker 1: technology used, whether it be how much we're on social
Speaker 1: media or how much time we're spending gaming on our screens,
Speaker 1: is something that parents have to regulate. The problem is
Speaker 1: one like I'm too old for my parents to regulate it,
Speaker 1: so so what am I going to do? And also
Speaker 1: like my parents use it, so it is sort of
Speaker 1: like sugar in the sense it's like there are parents
Speaker 1: that tell their kids not each sugar who have major
Speaker 1: sugar addictions. We had those conversations in the past, and
Speaker 1: now we're starting to have them about technology. But how
Speaker 1: do we tell our kids to regulate their use of technology?
Speaker 1: And we can't regulate our own And wants to say
Speaker 1: to us that we can't regulate our own technology. His
Speaker 1: Cara with a story of what happens when you add
Speaker 1: service think they know everything about you, but actually get
Speaker 1: it all wrong. I just wrote the whole thing in
Speaker 1: like thirty minutes just you know, banging the keyboard, just
Speaker 1: sobbing the whole time. Dear tech companies. Gillian is a
Speaker 1: social media power user. She uses Twitter for work at
Speaker 1: the Washington Post and Facebook for her social calendar. Even
Speaker 1: her wedding is on YouTube, and in late she was
Speaker 1: entering the final months of her pregnancy. She and her
Speaker 1: husband Bobby were doing the normal what to expect when
Speaker 1: you're expecting stuff, preparing for their newborn son to come
Speaker 1: into their lives. I can remember about two days before
Speaker 1: everything happened, soaking in the tub, and I was just thinking, God,
Speaker 1: this has just gone perfectly, Like I've never been accidentally
Speaker 1: pregnant despite not always being responsible, and we had no
Speaker 1: problem getting pregnant when we wanted to, despite my being
Speaker 1: thirty eight. So I was just like, wow, one and done.
Speaker 1: This totally worked. A couple of days later, I was
Speaker 1: feeling some pain, so I called the doctor's office and
Speaker 1: I said, well, I haven't felt a move today, and
Speaker 1: they said, okay, come in, and so I went in
Speaker 1: and they put me on the sonogram, and I knew immediately.
Speaker 1: I was just screaming no, no, no. A week or
Speaker 1: so after Gillian's sun died. She was being haunted by
Speaker 1: targeted advertising ad that assumed she had given birth to
Speaker 1: a healthy baby boy. When I would scroll through Facebook
Speaker 1: or Instagram, I would get maternity where ads, and so
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I have to teach it that
Speaker 1: I'm not pregnant anymore. Gillian did the only thing people
Speaker 1: can do with ads they don't want to see. She
Speaker 1: clicked the three dots in the corner of the ad
Speaker 1: and gave feedback. So I would say I don't want
Speaker 1: to see this ad, and then it would say why,
Speaker 1: and I would say, because it's not relevant to me,
Speaker 1: which is like so hard to acknowledge. But Gillian learned
Speaker 1: the hard way that the Facebook algorithm isn't programmed for
Speaker 1: the outcome of a still birth. Then when I god,
Speaker 1: when I got that experienced email, I just I can't
Speaker 1: even like I just snapped finished registering your baby for
Speaker 1: lifelong credit tracking. I just I was just like, you
Speaker 1: have got to be kidding me. Gillian was angry, and
Speaker 1: she knew she had a platform, so she wrote the
Speaker 1: letter and posted it on Twitter. Dear tech companies, I
Speaker 1: know you knew I was pregnant. You probably saw me
Speaker 1: googling maternity plaid and baby safe crib paint, and I
Speaker 1: bet Amazon dot Com even told you my due date
Speaker 1: when I created that prime registry, and silly me, I
Speaker 1: even clicked once or twice on the maternity where ads
Speaker 1: Facebook served up. What can I say, I'm your ideal
Speaker 1: engaged user, but didn't you also see me googling baby
Speaker 1: not moving? And then the announcement posts with key where
Speaker 1: it's like heartbroken and problem and stillborn and the two
Speaker 1: hundred tear drop emoticons from my friends. Gillian's letters struck
Speaker 1: a chord. It got retweeted twenty eight thousand times, and
Speaker 1: shortly after Gillian posted her letter to Twitter, she received
Speaker 1: a response tweet from Facebook's VP of Ads, Rob Goldman.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry for your loss, he said, and you're
Speaker 1: painful experience with our products. We have a setting available
Speaker 1: that can block ads about some topics people may find painful,
Speaker 1: including parenting. It still needs improvement, but please know that
Speaker 1: we're working on it and welcome your feedback. So I
Speaker 1: turned it off, and within a few hours I got
Speaker 1: an ad for adoption agencies, and the next day I
Speaker 1: got an ad for um father's son matching one sees.
Speaker 1: I've taken screenshots to while every time I get one,
Speaker 1: I just take a picture of it, just like it's
Speaker 1: not working. Yeah, the adoption one g f y. You know,
Speaker 1: Rob Goldman's advice may have changed the ads, but it
Speaker 1: didn't solve the fundamental problem. The algorithms couldn't stop reminding
Speaker 1: Gillian of her loss. Other people were like, well, don't
Speaker 1: be on Facebook at all, you know, don't do any
Speaker 1: of those things, And first of all, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's realistic, especially because for Gillian, Facebook was also providing
Speaker 1: comfort through it all. It was helpful to have my
Speaker 1: friends timing in and saying, we're so sorry, you know,
Speaker 1: what can we do? And you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: people made an Uber eats fund for me and my
Speaker 1: husband so we could just have food delivered. While when
Speaker 1: we got home it's like, you know, the twenty one
Speaker 1: century bringing over lasagna. And this was all organized on Facebook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was on Facebook, and ironically it helped her connect
Speaker 1: with people going through the same thing. A woman who
Speaker 1: used to go to my church, she had a still
Speaker 1: birth on Christmas Day a few weeks after I did,
Speaker 1: and the memorial service for her baby was posted to Facebook,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have known about it, and I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: gone if I hadn't checked Facebook. Gillian isn't planning to
Speaker 1: delete social media. She just wishes it could be better.
Speaker 1: She's still going to use it to keep in touch
Speaker 1: with friends and family. But whereas she was once comfortable
Speaker 1: with her wedding on YouTube, there are now something she
Speaker 1: won't be comfortable sharing. And I have to say, now
Speaker 1: having this experience, you know, I knew it was being tracked,
Speaker 1: but having the tracking revealed to me in such a
Speaker 1: garish display. If we do have a living child someday,
Speaker 1: I think that's going to be actually really easy for
Speaker 1: me to just be like, no Internet, you don't get
Speaker 1: to have that. Even after the experience. Gillian doesn't hate Facebook.
Speaker 1: At the same time, she wouldn't want her future children tracked,
Speaker 1: a bit like the Silicon Valley execs we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier taking their own children off social media. But what
Speaker 1: if the same targeting technology that harm Gillian could help
Speaker 1: others and keep people who are hurting from damaging themselves
Speaker 1: and society. And what if it wasn't a broad group
Speaker 1: like new mothers being targeted by ad bots, but a
Speaker 1: specific group of people having their personal search results changed.
Speaker 1: I heard about a programmer Alphabet, Google's parent company trying
Speaker 1: to do just that, and I wanted to know more.
Speaker 1: We'll get there after the brain. My name is Yasmin Green.
Speaker 1: I am the director of Research and Development at Jigsaw.
Speaker 1: We are sitting in one of our rooms in our
Speaker 1: New York office. The name of the meeting room is
Speaker 1: Smoke Signal Communication Technology. Yeah, they're all named after different
Speaker 1: communication technologies. Jigsaw is a part of Alphabet and Google
Speaker 1: that's focused on technology that addresses big security challenges. So
Speaker 1: how did Jigsaw begin? Two decades ago? When we were
Speaker 1: designing the platforms and apps, we were not really imagining
Speaker 1: that repressive governments and criminals and terrorist groups or like
Speaker 1: salivating and about innovating to use these platforms just as
Speaker 1: just as well as everyone else. Um. And now we
Speaker 1: realize that we really need to understand their goals and
Speaker 1: their activities if we want to keep people safe online.
Speaker 1: It's Yasmin's job to look at how those repressive regimes,
Speaker 1: criminals and terrorist groups operate, find trends and try to
Speaker 1: counter them. Our approaches to try to understand the human
Speaker 1: journeys and to understand the role of technology and see
Speaker 1: if we can build technology that stops people getting to
Speaker 1: the point that we would consider them of ident extremist
Speaker 1: or a terrorist. So if you want to understand terrorists,
Speaker 1: where do you start. Well, to better understand extremism, Yasmin's
Speaker 1: team use some somewhat extreme methods themselves. One of the
Speaker 1: first things we did in two thousand and eleven was
Speaker 1: we brought together eighty four former extremists and survivors of terrorism.
Speaker 1: And we had isn't a mist people who's going to
Speaker 1: find Afghanistan or al Shabab from Somalia, Nigerian isna miss militia,
Speaker 1: but we also had a form of violent Israeli settler.
Speaker 1: We had form of Christian militia. We've got them one
Speaker 1: together on one place. Can you imagine the security concern
Speaker 1: for Google in helping us convene everyone in one place.
Speaker 1: We had snipers on the roof, We had six months
Speaker 1: vetting for everyone. We cared about them being public and
Speaker 1: associated with an engine to bring people out of those
Speaker 1: extremist groups. And beyond gathering all the former terrorists in
Speaker 1: one place, Yasmin's team also invited the victims of terrorism.
Speaker 1: We had survivors, So we had people who celebrated nine
Speaker 1: eleven and people who had lost family members in eleven.
Speaker 1: We had a lady who said that she had woken
Speaker 1: up in hospital with a name band on her risk
Speaker 1: that said gender unknown because her body was like so mutilated.
Speaker 1: The point of bringing everyone together was to say what
Speaker 1: is common in the human radicalization path even when you're
Speaker 1: looking across ideologies, and does technology have a role to play?
Speaker 1: In other words, Yasmin wanted to understand how people become
Speaker 1: terrorists and what role the internet plays. But Chicksaw's role
Speaker 1: was never just to have summits and collect the information.
Speaker 1: They wanted to take action, and ISIS was the obvious
Speaker 1: place to start. In March of this year, ISIS actually
Speaker 1: lost the last of its remaining territory, but when the
Speaker 1: left fate was that it's height. Thousands of foreign fighters
Speaker 1: were recruited online. They left their homes in places like Germany, England,
Speaker 1: America for the battle fields of Syria. This trip that
Speaker 1: we took to Iraq, where we spoke to defectors of ISIS,
Speaker 1: was really instructive for us. We had these face to
Speaker 1: face conversations with these young men who had left home,
Speaker 1: gone to Syria, and Iraq trained with ISIS, did their
Speaker 1: religious indoctrination with ISIS, got their postings, some of them
Speaker 1: as suicide bombers, some of them as technical drivers, some
Speaker 1: of them as night watchmen. And they had realized that
Speaker 1: it was all a lie. So they're telling us about it,
Speaker 1: and we say, if you knew the day that you
Speaker 1: left everything that you know and now, would you still
Speaker 1: have gone? And they invariably said that they would still
Speaker 1: have gone. Honestly, I'd already finished, he asked me in
Speaker 1: a sentence. In my head, I thought she was going
Speaker 1: to say, they invariably said that they wouldn't have gone,
Speaker 1: but in fact, knowing they were facing not just heroic martyrdom,
Speaker 1: red cues, lack of medical care, splintered leadership, they still
Speaker 1: would have left the comfort of their home countries again
Speaker 1: places like America, England, Canada, to travel to Syria, an
Speaker 1: active war zone. So Jackson needed to understand what what
Speaker 1: ICE is doing to lure people in that was so
Speaker 1: very powerful. We identified the recruitment narratives and they were
Speaker 1: largely around people who thought that this was the devout, correct,
Speaker 1: religous thing to do, that this wasn't mslim utopia than
Speaker 1: was going to lead to a healthier, happier life than
Speaker 1: remaining in the West. People who are interested in the
Speaker 1: military conflated. So there were several and we generated a
Speaker 1: targeting strategy to reach these people based on their online browsing,
Speaker 1: specifically like their online searches take a moment to absorb that.
Speaker 1: Based on online browsing history and searches, Jigsaw were able
Speaker 1: to identify potential extremists and serve them adds to push
Speaker 1: them towards alternative content. But wouldn't that raise alarm bells
Speaker 1: for the people do in the searching Yasmin and her
Speaker 1: team had to be subtle. If you were interested in
Speaker 1: fact was about Jahard, religious udics about Johard, we would
Speaker 1: give you those originally, It's just not the ones that
Speaker 1: Isis was proposing, but alternative ones. Or if you're interested
Speaker 1: to understand what life is like in the Caliphate, let's
Speaker 1: show you citizen journalism of the long cueues for bread
Speaker 1: or the state of the hospitals in the Caliphate. So
Speaker 1: you're still getting something that addresses your interest. Um, it
Speaker 1: would just be an alternative information source to the one
Speaker 1: that you were looking for and it was really important
Speaker 1: to us to make sure that we were targeting, you know,
Speaker 1: and finding people who were really at risk as opposed
Speaker 1: to just people who are interested in isis that's right.
Speaker 1: Looking at browsing and search history, Jigsaw and Google can
Speaker 1: look at two different people looking up fatoas online and
Speaker 1: only serve redirecting ads to one. When you get the
Speaker 1: level more granular, you can start to set up a
Speaker 1: targeting strategy that really does differentiate mainstream interest in this
Speaker 1: group to the people who are you know, sympathetic and
Speaker 1: potential join us. It has turned out to be really
Speaker 1: effective since my conversation with Yasmin. A terrorist attack on
Speaker 1: two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand killed fifty people and
Speaker 1: focus the world's attention on the threat posed by far
Speaker 1: right terror. I emailed with Yasmin and she told me
Speaker 1: that she and her team are quote attending to the
Speaker 1: far right threat with increased urgency. I think it's nice
Speaker 1: that they're trying to fix things, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the Anhauser Busch family funding a study on alcohol, right,
Speaker 1: I guess, except we kind of no alcohol is bad,
Speaker 1: whereas we can still hope that the internet is neutral,
Speaker 1: although it is clear the Internet has become a key
Speaker 1: method of radicalization for terrorists of all stripes, and so
Speaker 1: for me at least, it's good to know that the
Speaker 1: technology companies are acknowledging that and smart people like Yasmin
Speaker 1: are working on it. Although it does also mean living
Speaker 1: in a world where our main internet search providers also
Speaker 1: edit the results. Do we want Google controlling what we
Speaker 1: know about the world or recommending what else we should now? Right?
Speaker 1: And then what if Google turned that immense power to
Speaker 1: influence directly onto me or you? More on that after
Speaker 1: the break, Tristan, we've been talking about chicksaw on their
Speaker 1: manipulation when you look at elections and the way extremist
Speaker 1: groups are using technology to radicalize and proliferate. Should tech
Speaker 1: companies be trying to offset some of the damage they're
Speaker 1: doing by intervening for good? Yeah, Well, this is an
Speaker 1: incredibly nuanced topic because essentially the way to see what's
Speaker 1: going on with technology today is there's a massive asymmetry.
Speaker 1: It would be easy for you and I and he
Speaker 1: has mean to say clearly isis is bad and terrorism
Speaker 1: is bad. So let's redirect when you're searching for things
Speaker 1: that look like terrorist videos. But if you suddenly then
Speaker 1: open the door and say you're about to watch a
Speaker 1: video on climate change, and people at Google, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: believe that climate change wasn't real and they said, we're
Speaker 1: going to start redirecting you away from that. Again, who
Speaker 1: would they be to say? And that's actually a critical
Speaker 1: juncture that we're at right now, because there's kind of
Speaker 1: a pluralism where we all believe and think different things,
Speaker 1: and we want to say that's your truth and not
Speaker 1: my truth, and so we have this collapse of well,
Speaker 1: who is the moral authority on these topics? And after all,
Speaker 1: we're all Americans, well not me, but a citizens of
Speaker 1: a democracy. We have a voice in our diplomacy. What
Speaker 1: about is uses as the Internet? I think it's important
Speaker 1: that we not try to just have a philosophy cocktail
Speaker 1: conversation and debate it. We have to actually recognize that
Speaker 1: this is having real world consequences. But the difficult thing
Speaker 1: to reckon with is that it all comes back to attention.
Speaker 1: YouTube has a tilt. We're on the one side of
Speaker 1: the spectrum you have the calm science Carl Siggin slowly explaining,
Speaker 1: and on the other side of the spectrum. You have UFOs, Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, and crazy Town. If I'm YouTube and I
Speaker 1: want you to watch more, Let's say you start at
Speaker 1: the science section. If I want you to watch more,
Speaker 1: which direction between those two am I going to steer you?
Speaker 1: I'm always going to steer you too. Crazy Town so
Speaker 1: at scale, even in language that the engineers don't speak,
Speaker 1: the algorithms had figured out that crazy Town is really
Speaker 1: really good at getting people's attention. And we know the
Speaker 1: effect isn't just on politics, what about regular people who
Speaker 1: get pushed into joinning ISIS or taking other extreme positions.
Speaker 1: If you start a team girl on a dieting video,
Speaker 1: the YouTube algorithm recommends an arexia videos because it's calculating
Speaker 1: away and figures out those are the things that are
Speaker 1: really good at keeping people of that age demographic on YouTube.
Speaker 1: And if you start someone on a Supember eleventh news
Speaker 1: video of the planes crashing into the towers, the recommendations
Speaker 1: are all going to be the nine eleven conspiracy theory videos.
Speaker 1: And Alex Jones YouTube actually recommended fifteen billion times Alex
Speaker 1: Jones videos, two billion of which were viewed, even if
Speaker 1: only one out of a thousand of those people believed it,
Speaker 1: So one out of a thousand people watching those two
Speaker 1: billion views believe that that's like printing, you know, a
Speaker 1: church of scientology called about you know once a month.
Speaker 1: In terms of the scale, we are jacked into these systems,
Speaker 1: We are jacked into these environments that are telling us
Speaker 1: and steering us towards flows of attention and ways of
Speaker 1: seeing the world that are inevitable. And the question is
Speaker 1: what flows of attention do we want? And in the end,
Speaker 1: it all comes down to who's steering the ship and
Speaker 1: what they're steering you towards. Who watches the watchman he
Speaker 1: has been argues that jakes Will takes ethics heavily into consideration,
Speaker 1: but not all companies do. And Tristan actually has a
Speaker 1: radical idea. He believes that we need to wean ourselves
Speaker 1: as an economy and as a society from business models
Speaker 1: that compete for our attention to sell us things. I
Speaker 1: think we really underestimate that this is affecting every layer
Speaker 1: of society. And when you have three or four tech
Speaker 1: companies choosing what will show up in the minds of
Speaker 1: two bill and people every day, you know, our minds
Speaker 1: are the source of all of our actions, But don't
Speaker 1: we bear some responsibility for our own actions? Isn't that
Speaker 1: part of the American dream? After all? No one forces
Speaker 1: you into a casino or to buy that bar of
Speaker 1: chocolate as you're paying at the supermarket. Right. You know,
Speaker 1: you're the one clicking on those YouTube videos. You're the
Speaker 1: ones who are clicking on those Russian ads. You're the ones,
Speaker 1: you know, checking your phones because of those light colors
Speaker 1: that are shining up all the time. We're just giving
Speaker 1: people what they want. You're responsible for your choices. What
Speaker 1: we have to do is flip the table around. We're
Speaker 1: not giving people what they want. We're giving people what
Speaker 1: they can't help but watch and once we acknowledge that,
Speaker 1: we can start to find some reasons to hope. We've
Speaker 1: found by getting Apple and Google to launch both um
Speaker 1: these digital well being initiatives, which take the blue light
Speaker 1: out of your screens and do gray scale late at
Speaker 1: night and show you ways of minimizing the time you
Speaker 1: spend on your phone and things like that. It's a
Speaker 1: baby step in the right direction. But that happened against
Speaker 1: their own business interests because the engineers themselves started to
Speaker 1: see it this way. Of course, this addiction economy is
Speaker 1: fueling so much more, from heck democracy to radicalization, to
Speaker 1: mental health issues and the epidemic of a loneliness. The
Speaker 1: list of problems that we need to solve is much
Speaker 1: bigger than just making our own gray skill, and that's
Speaker 1: what has to happen next. Happily, not everything in life
Speaker 1: that makes us feel good is bad for us, and
Speaker 1: some target recommendations can make us very happy. Indeed, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about love, because one of the ways that
Speaker 1: you might have felt AI touched your life is through
Speaker 1: online dating. Maybe the person you woke up next to
Speaker 1: this morning was matched to you by a computer algorithm.
Speaker 1: And according to a study released in January Stanford, straight
Speaker 1: and six of LGBTQ couples now meet online. Tinder processes
Speaker 1: two billion swipes per day. That's a lot of data,
Speaker 1: and it feels pretty good to meet someone who like
Speaker 1: no matter how it happens. The lgbt Q statistic makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me because we don't have
Speaker 1: to come in contact with judgment, with hate speech, with
Speaker 1: home whatever it may be, there's a lot less of
Speaker 1: it when it's a peer to peer thing on your phone.
Speaker 1: Hopefully the other thing is the heterosexual dating pool is
Speaker 1: a pool. The in my case, lesbian dating pool is
Speaker 1: a puddle, and that puddle at least can be amplified
Speaker 1: on an app like Hinge and Tinder and whatever. I mean.
Speaker 1: I have noticed a lot more gay couples in the
Speaker 1: New York Times wedding section, which I read religiously. The
Speaker 1: other thing that I notice is that a lot of
Speaker 1: the couples, both straight and gay, meet on apps. It's
Speaker 1: interesting to see that it's influenced the culture in that
Speaker 1: way so much so that you know, X amount of
Speaker 1: people per week are meeting on those apps. And actually
Speaker 1: in the States right now, there's been quite a significant
Speaker 1: uptick in interracial marriages. That's pretty cool and it's something
Speaker 1: to really celebrate as well. I mean, I was on
Speaker 1: Instagram a few days ago and I saw somebody who
Speaker 1: uploaded it picture of their wedding cake which had the
Speaker 1: Tinder logo on it. Um. So you know, people feel
Speaker 1: real terms of gratitude and excitement about meeting their partner, obviously,
Speaker 1: And one person had a successful Tinder experience is the
Speaker 1: producer of the show Julian Weller. That's right. So I
Speaker 1: met my girlfriend on mine I've actually been to a
Speaker 1: couple of weddings also that they called Tinder Ella stories
Speaker 1: if the iPhone case fits. Yeah, But you know, I
Speaker 1: think in essence, the use of something like Tinder is
Speaker 1: that it just makes your dating pool bigger. To Cara's point,
Speaker 1: but there are other apps, right, there's other approaches where
Speaker 1: people can enter lots more information in about themselves beyond
Speaker 1: just this sort of casual way to meet. We wanted
Speaker 1: to find out more about the data that drives who
Speaker 1: we fall in love with, so we spoke to Helen Fisher.
Speaker 1: I'm Dr Helen Fisher. I'm a biological anthropologist at the
Speaker 1: Kinsey Institute. I've written six books on love, put people
Speaker 1: in brain scanners, and actually I'm also the chief scientific
Speaker 1: advisor to match dot com. We've been talking a lot
Speaker 1: about computer algorithms influencing behavior in this episode Code, But
Speaker 1: what motivates us in the first place, Well, there are
Speaker 1: pathways and rules in the brain, not unlike a computer.
Speaker 1: I developed a questionnaire some time ago that's now been
Speaker 1: taken by fourteen million people in forty countries. Actually, and
Speaker 1: there's patterns of behavior. I mean, we walk around with
Speaker 1: algorithms in our head I mean, the brain is constantly
Speaker 1: responding to all kinds of things, and it certainly is
Speaker 1: a series of algorithms. So if the brain is like
Speaker 1: a collection of computer algorithms but much more complicated, what
Speaker 1: are the inputs what drives who we fall in love with?
Speaker 1: There's four brain systems that each one of them is
Speaker 1: linked with a constellation of biological traits, and they are
Speaker 1: the dopamine, serotonin, testasterone, and estrogen systems. And so I
Speaker 1: created a questionnaire to see what you know, how you
Speaker 1: expressed the traits in each one of these systems. Once
Speaker 1: Helen had developed the quiz, she validated it using a
Speaker 1: brain scanner, and then I watched now at fourteen million people,
Speaker 1: and Helen got an insight into the brain system that
Speaker 1: makes us experience love in the first place. When we
Speaker 1: put the people in the machine, I had expected that
Speaker 1: brain readers, link with the emotions and cognitive processes, would
Speaker 1: become active, and they do. But what everybody had in
Speaker 1: common is activity in brain readers way at the base
Speaker 1: of the brain link with drive, with craving, with focus,
Speaker 1: with motivation, with energy. In other words, Helen found that
Speaker 1: the ability to fall in love is just as deep
Speaker 1: in the brain as other survival drives things we have
Speaker 1: no control over, but it lies right near factories that
Speaker 1: orchestrate thirst and hunger. Thirst and hunger keep you alive today.
Speaker 1: Romantic love drives you to fall in love form of
Speaker 1: pair bound and pass your DNA into tomorrow. That brain system,
Speaker 1: the one that makes us feel that we need to eat,
Speaker 1: or need to drink, or need to be with someone,
Speaker 1: is also the one that drives addiction, and that has
Speaker 1: implications for the technologies we use every day beyond just
Speaker 1: dating apps, not only the substance addictions, but the behavioral
Speaker 1: addictions like gambling or food addiction. That brain region became
Speaker 1: activated not only among people who are madly and happily
Speaker 1: in love, but also among people who were rejected in love,
Speaker 1: and even in people who are in love long term.
Speaker 1: And it is linked with the addiction centers in the brain.
Speaker 1: And perhaps at some point we're going to come to
Speaker 1: understand a much broader view of the word addiction. This
Speaker 1: brings us right back to what Tristan was saying. Our
Speaker 1: apps and smart devices are hijacking some of the deepest
Speaker 1: and most powerful systems in our brain. The truth is
Speaker 1: that Tinder apps social media validation. They all generate the
Speaker 1: same feelings as romantic love. So of course we're prone
Speaker 1: to be addicted. We want to look at somebody, to
Speaker 1: hear somebody, to have somebody respond to us. If you're
Speaker 1: an alien who came to Earth and he looked at
Speaker 1: the way human touched their phone, always in their hand,
Speaker 1: caressing it, reaching forward with a panic look in their eye,
Speaker 1: responding to it with a smile, you would say, the
Speaker 1: same thing is happening. Well, it's very different, but it may.
Speaker 1: We used to me that some of the same brain systems.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know when you feel fear, you feel fear.
Speaker 1: As Helen found, love is fundamentally about the survival of
Speaker 1: our species. So it's handled by the same part of
Speaker 1: our brain as hunger, thirst, and addiction. And it's those
Speaker 1: very brain centers that Twitter and Facebook on Instagram appeal
Speaker 1: to using behavioral science to keep us engaged, to keep
Speaker 1: us sharing. So when thousand Twitter users retweeted Gillian's open
Speaker 1: letter to the technology companies, they did it because on
Speaker 1: a very deep level, it triggered a survival response, and
Speaker 1: in turn, that feedback loop is addictive. You know, I
Speaker 1: did a study with Matt and I asked the singles
Speaker 1: in America and do you feel that these machines are addictive?
Speaker 1: And some like eight over said yes, And people said
Speaker 1: that they would like to go back to dating without
Speaker 1: any of them, and knowing how tempting it can be
Speaker 1: to keep swiping, keep searching. Helen has some advice for
Speaker 1: those of us looking for love. It's very well own
Speaker 1: in this community that the more choices you have, the
Speaker 1: less likely you are to choose anybody. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that I say to people is, after you
Speaker 1: meet nine people, stop and get to know at least
Speaker 1: one of those people more. Because all the data show
Speaker 1: that the more you get to know somebody, the more
Speaker 1: you like them and the more that you think that
Speaker 1: they're like you. You know, for millions of years, we
Speaker 1: weren't doing this over the internet or even the telephone.
Speaker 1: We were doing this in person. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: way people met, and the brain is built to meet
Speaker 1: in person. Helen Fisher still believes in love. She just
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to sleep walk into endlessly swiping, endless
Speaker 1: date spurred by an addiction to see what's next, what's possible,
Speaker 1: what's right around the corner. We know we're at a
Speaker 1: dangerous crossroads and that we're susceptible to manipulation, and companies
Speaker 1: know they can manipulate us for good and evil with
Speaker 1: technology that touches us at our evolutionary roots. But the
Speaker 1: future of those technologies isn't in vitable, and we still
Speaker 1: have the power in our hands to decide what to
Speaker 1: allow in our lives, because the ways we decide to
Speaker 1: live with new technologies could have as much impact on
Speaker 1: our lives as the Constitution or the New Deal. What
Speaker 1: we decide to do next and how we do it
Speaker 1: will have consequences. And on this series, we'll be interviewing
Speaker 1: some of the world's greatest thinkers, that people who are
Speaker 1: changing the future of our food, and the researchers helping
Speaker 1: disabled people control machines with their minds. Together, we'll see
Speaker 1: what we can do to pry our eyes open from
Speaker 1: this dangerous sleepwalk I'm as veloshin see you next time.
Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is a production of our Heart Radio and unusual productions.
Speaker 1: There's so much we don't have time for in our
Speaker 1: episodes but that we'd love to share with you. So
Speaker 1: the latest AI news, live interviews and behind the scenes
Speaker 1: footage find us on Instagram, at Sleepwalker's Podcast or at
Speaker 1: Sleepwalker's podcast dot com. Sleepwalkers is hosted by me Osloshin
Speaker 1: and co hosted by me Kara Price. We produced by
Speaker 1: Julian Weller, with audio editing by Jacopo Penzo, Taylor ship
Speaker 1: Coin and mixing by Tristan McNeil. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: Matthew Riddle. Recording assistance this episode from Chris Hambroke and
Speaker 1: Jackson Bierfeld. Sleepwalkers is executive produced by me Ozveloshin and
Speaker 1: Manges Ticketer. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.