Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is a production of I Heart Radio and Unusual
Speaker 1: productions in Casa Yeah Familiar. I was already at home,
Speaker 1: resting with my family when I suddenly get a phone call.
Speaker 1: Had fallen from the sky. Picture of field in rural Mexico.
Speaker 1: Surrounding it yellow tape, a police car flashing lights, soldiers
Speaker 1: carrying automatic weapons. Inside the line of cordon is a
Speaker 1: large transparent globe, a bit like a washed up jellyfish,
Speaker 1: but in fact it had fallen from the sky. Here
Speaker 1: is state official Juan Carlos Castile, important to corder. It
Speaker 1: fell from the sky at n in an erratic way,
Speaker 1: making circles. The artifact itself had some sensors and light
Speaker 1: that was flashing beeping one Manuel Sanchez. You had the
Speaker 1: guts to approach the object, look at it closely, take
Speaker 1: pictures and share them. Those pictures quickly turned into a
Speaker 1: social media phenomenon. It really cost punic in the people.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have never seen something like this. Actually, people
Speaker 1: came from other settlements to see the artifact to take
Speaker 1: selfies with it. I imagine that it could be an
Speaker 1: ESPIONA charity fact that relay the images. Classified Information Officer
Speaker 1: Castillo worried about the origin when a beeping wearing jellyfish
Speaker 1: falls out of the sky. Sure it could be spycraft,
Speaker 1: but if it's something even scarier, something other worldly, Officer
Speaker 1: Castillo noticed that the beast was tagged with the phone number,
Speaker 1: and if you dial that number, you'd ultimately get to
Speaker 1: balloon C s I. This is where we find out
Speaker 1: why balloons either last a hundred days or they don't.
Speaker 1: That's La des Roche and where at X, a secretive
Speaker 1: lab at alphabet, Google's parent company. Their mission is no
Speaker 1: less than to invent the future. And it's X who
Speaker 1: piloted the program to launch balloons into the stratosphere and
Speaker 1: retrieve them when they come down. So, in order to
Speaker 1: look at a balloon that's the size of a tennis court,
Speaker 1: where a failure smaller than a millimeter is a huge
Speaker 1: problem for us UM, we do have to build specialized equipment.
Speaker 1: So behind me is the world's largest flatbed scanner. We're
Speaker 1: working on models of what does a certain type of
Speaker 1: damage look like, what do we think causes that damage?
Speaker 1: It kind of makes a fingerprint. But why does X
Speaker 1: and balloons into the sky for months at a time
Speaker 1: in the first place, I'm Velosen and this is Sleepwalkers.
Speaker 1: So carry you first told me about this balloon being
Speaker 1: discovered in rural Mexico, and then we tracked down the
Speaker 1: first responders. But what grabbed you about the story? First
Speaker 1: of all, it's a crazy story. Something fell out of
Speaker 1: the sky into a field in rural Mexico, which I love.
Speaker 1: But it's also one of those moments when you know,
Speaker 1: real people come in contact with technology in a way
Speaker 1: that almost feels like not to mention them again, but
Speaker 1: like a Steven Spielberg movie, you know. I mean, just
Speaker 1: imagine not knowing what this thing is in your backyard,
Speaker 1: and it sort of reminds me of other stories that
Speaker 1: we've reported on, whether it's Gillian with targeting, Glen with
Speaker 1: parole algorithms. You know, the way in which people interact
Speaker 1: with technology is changing, and this is just the perfect
Speaker 1: example of that. This February, we went to Mountain View
Speaker 1: in California to visit x and learn how they're involved
Speaker 1: with giant balloons floating in the stratosphere, because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, rural Mexico isn't the only place they've made contact.
Speaker 1: We had internet before Maria, we had so many things
Speaker 1: that we depended on the Internet for everything. Five days
Speaker 1: after Hurrican Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the SEC granted an
Speaker 1: experimental license to X to restore cell service to the island.
Speaker 1: The government let X step in to provide a service
Speaker 1: it couldn't, and Google sent their balloons. So when we
Speaker 1: saw what was happening in Puerto Rico, you know, it
Speaker 1: was really hard for us not the help right like that.
Speaker 1: The whole company in some sense really wanted to get
Speaker 1: behind that effort. It's kind of a rare opportunity when um,
Speaker 1: there's a problem like that, where you know, problem with connectivity,
Speaker 1: everyone's offline and you happen to have a fleet of
Speaker 1: stratospheric Internet balloons like UM, I think we're probably the
Speaker 1: only ones who can say that. That's Sell Candido, head
Speaker 1: of Engineering Fallon And if cell towers in the sky
Speaker 1: sound like the stuff of science fiction, they're already here
Speaker 1: on A massive magnitude eight earthquake hit Peru, and while
Speaker 1: cell towers and cables were down, Loons balloons were able
Speaker 1: to restore temporary Internet access within just forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: But how does Sell and his team get the balloons
Speaker 1: to go where they're needed. So the idea in Act
Speaker 1: one was we were going to build this ring or
Speaker 1: balloons around the world, covering an entire latitude band. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a challenging concept to execute. Most of
Speaker 1: them will be over the ocean, not connecting anyone. The
Speaker 1: idea just wasn't feasible. So to make it work Google
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to get the balloons to navigate.
Speaker 1: Astro Tylor runs X and he supervised the original development
Speaker 1: of Loon. We always hoped that the balloons could be
Speaker 1: intelligent in which winds they choose to jump onto. As
Speaker 1: the balloons have gotten better and better at predicting what
Speaker 1: the winds will be at different altitudes, they can play
Speaker 1: these more and more sophisticated chess games. If I go
Speaker 1: up by a kilometer, I think I could catch a
Speaker 1: wind that's going to the left at ten miles an hour,
Speaker 1: and I'll hang out there for about three hours. Then
Speaker 1: I'll go down by two kilometers and it plays this
Speaker 1: out and makes this plan for how it's going to
Speaker 1: get not just kind of to Australia, but right over Perth,
Speaker 1: constantly reading the winds and predicting how they might change
Speaker 1: in order to stay around the Earth is no small task,
Speaker 1: and according to Sell, it takes a lot of computing power.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you would be able to do this,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had a person navigating each balloon.
Speaker 1: The information processing capability and the act that you have
Speaker 1: to be constantly watching making adjustments, it's a job that's
Speaker 1: really well suited to a computer. It is a huge
Speaker 1: volume of computation in our data center. I think that
Speaker 1: is an area where Alphabet has a big advantage. How
Speaker 1: big is a giant data center? Oh um, they're giant
Speaker 1: shy uping center, bigger than shopping centers, powered by often
Speaker 1: renewable energy, so they're often built next to a river
Speaker 1: just so it can use an entire hydro electric plant.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a time of computers being put to
Speaker 1: all kinds of problems across Alphabet Luon is one of them. Right.
Speaker 1: The reality is that today a company like Alphabet has
Speaker 1: more computational power, more data and more engineering expertise than
Speaker 1: most countries. So it can restore connectivity to Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: or Peru after a natural disaster, and it can help
Speaker 1: in daily emergencies as well as Obviously, Christio told us.
Speaker 1: There are situations in his underconnected area that are currently
Speaker 1: impossible to communicate quickly enough to receive help in time,
Speaker 1: and Luon could change that. So the balloon that fell
Speaker 1: out of the sky in Mexico, it was a sign
Speaker 1: of things to come of a new global infrastructure being
Speaker 1: built by technology companies, not governments, and that brings real leverage,
Speaker 1: which is something we should all think about, even if
Speaker 1: we don't find a giant gen fish in our backyard.
Speaker 1: I'm all for development. There are emergency situations in the
Speaker 1: Sierra that are impossible to communicate to us in order
Speaker 1: to act within reasonable time frames, but I don't dismiss
Speaker 1: the possibility of it being a trick by a company
Speaker 1: to steal information from us either. Of course, these balloons
Speaker 1: are actually very well intentioned fundamentally to bring internet to
Speaker 1: places where it doesn't otherwise exist. That said, Kara, Google
Speaker 1: aren't the only people trying to do this. Facebook are two,
Speaker 1: and they had a program for a while attempting to
Speaker 1: use solar powered drones to connect the world. Right, And
Speaker 1: when Facebook and Google are both trying to do something,
Speaker 1: it's says to me that it's probably not purely a
Speaker 1: philanthropic endeavor, there's probably some bottom line and getting all
Speaker 1: those people online. So anyway, we just heard from astro Teller,
Speaker 1: who runs X, which is historically a very secretive organization.
Speaker 1: We were invited inside the building. Do you understand a
Speaker 1: bit more about how one of the world's most powerful companies,
Speaker 1: Google is thinking about inventing the future. Hi, I'm astro Teller.
Speaker 1: I am the captain of Moonshots here at X. It's
Speaker 1: the part of alphabet where we try to design things
Speaker 1: that can become, if we're lucky, new businesses, hopefully Google scale,
Speaker 1: new businesses that can be as good for the world
Speaker 1: as Google husband. So Astro has charged with bulk producing
Speaker 1: Google scale innovations, as impossible as that sounds, but like
Speaker 1: any good factory supervisor, he's got some clear criteria. In
Speaker 1: order for something to be a moonshot, we require that
Speaker 1: it has three things. A huge problem with the world,
Speaker 1: radical proposed solution, and then some kind of breakthrough technology
Speaker 1: that gives us at least a fighting chance of making
Speaker 1: that science fiction sounding product. If you look around, you'll
Speaker 1: see a lot of bear concrete, polished cement floors apply
Speaker 1: would on the walls. The building's work in progress because
Speaker 1: the projects here are a work in progress. To even
Speaker 1: be considered for development at X, ideas have to be spectacular,
Speaker 1: balanced at the edge of the impossible. When someone says,
Speaker 1: what if we put a band of copper around the
Speaker 1: North Pole and let the flux of Earth's magnetic core,
Speaker 1: which goes up and down like a reversing, very slow
Speaker 1: alternating current, turn it into current in that wire, and
Speaker 1: then we could pipe all that current down to Norway
Speaker 1: or something and power the Earth that way. That may
Speaker 1: not actually work, but that statement that what if definitely
Speaker 1: took you outside of the normal, And as Astro points out,
Speaker 1: the lab itself is a moon shot. He has charged
Speaker 1: with delivering ten X impact on the world's most intractable problems.
Speaker 1: But they take think concerns seriously too, which is reportedly
Speaker 1: why X abandoned what on an invisibility device. We go
Speaker 1: talk to the public, we go talk to experts and
Speaker 1: thought leaders, we go talk to regulators, and we put
Speaker 1: these half formed ideas and prototypes in front of them
Speaker 1: and say, this is the problem we're trying to solve,
Speaker 1: here's how we're currently trying to solve it. What do
Speaker 1: you think And we get feedback and that helps educate
Speaker 1: us and repoint us in various ways. Internally, we also
Speaker 1: play a lot of what if games, So an example
Speaker 1: is what we call design fiction, where we either make
Speaker 1: pictures or literally write stories about our technology and how
Speaker 1: it might play out. But if you can't imagine it
Speaker 1: working out in really good ways for society, we definitely
Speaker 1: shouldn't be making it. And if you can imagine it
Speaker 1: working out, but you can describe some bad things that
Speaker 1: this moonshot might cause in society, being able to describe
Speaker 1: those things means maybe we can change how we're working
Speaker 1: on the moon shot. It's good to hear that there's
Speaker 1: a strong ethical framework governing innovation at X, but it's
Speaker 1: still a private company and they're making ethical decisions that
Speaker 1: impact all of us. Astro has been talking about infrastructure,
Speaker 1: but remember in our first episode the program to deter
Speaker 1: potential terrorists using targeted ads that was also sponsored by Google.
Speaker 1: So providing Internet and deterring terrorists are both good ideas,
Speaker 1: but when the same company does both and so much more,
Speaker 1: the concentration of power is concerning. Then again, in a
Speaker 1: political environment of gridlock and proposed cuts to science funding,
Speaker 1: maybe we should be grateful that the big technology companies
Speaker 1: are stepping into tackle urgent problems. You've heard the bacteria
Speaker 1: around the world are becoming more resistant to antibiotics. There's
Speaker 1: no way for some drug company to chase after all
Speaker 1: of these increasingly antibiotic resistant bacteria. And yet if we
Speaker 1: don't chase after them, we're going to look back at
Speaker 1: this time in the world as the golden age of
Speaker 1: antibiotics and sure miss it. Even if you could just
Speaker 1: simulate a bacteria inside a computer, that is asked, what
Speaker 1: would happen to this bacteria if I knocked out this gene,
Speaker 1: if I changed the pH in the solution that it's
Speaker 1: sitting in, if I subjected it to a lot of
Speaker 1: UV light. If you could just ask those kinds of
Speaker 1: basic questions, you could start to design new antibacterial agents
Speaker 1: at a thousand times the rate because you don't have
Speaker 1: to go around pipetting and waiting for these things to
Speaker 1: grow or die. If you could simulate life, that is,
Speaker 1: model any part of biology inside the computer, it would
Speaker 1: be a do over for the life sciences. That's an
Speaker 1: example of something we're in the very early days of exploring.
Speaker 1: Alphabet Google x loon Jigsaw. This constellation of interlocking companies
Speaker 1: is working on everything from bringing the Internet remote parts
Speaker 1: of the world, to deterring terrorists to creating new kinds
Speaker 1: of antibiotics. And if that sounds a lot like the
Speaker 1: work of government, well that's because it is. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we ask what does this concentration of power
Speaker 1: mean for us and what should we do about it.
Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot about Google Cara, but of
Speaker 1: course there's not just Google. We mentioned Facebook earlier, and
Speaker 1: then there's Amazon. Amazon makes up almost half of all
Speaker 1: online sales in the US. Just think about everything, you know.
Speaker 1: We've talked about Alexa gathering intimate data and more than
Speaker 1: a hundred million American homes and Jeff Be's His ambitions
Speaker 1: also include redefining healthcare in the US and also recently
Speaker 1: colonizing space where nicely so humble. Um, but it is
Speaker 1: getting harder and harder to define what these massive businesses
Speaker 1: actually are. Donald Trump calls the Washington Post the Amazon
Speaker 1: Washington Post, which it is since Bezo sported. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess, not exactly the Amazon Washington Post. But it
Speaker 1: does identify a real issue, which is that it's getting
Speaker 1: harder and harder to say what these multi industry companies are. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: because they all do so much, So how do we
Speaker 1: regulate them. One person who's been out in front of
Speaker 1: this issue is Lena Can While at Yale Law School
Speaker 1: and age eight, she wrote a landmark article called Amazon's
Speaker 1: antitrust Paradox. And we're now starting to have conversations as
Speaker 1: a society about using monopoly law to limit the power
Speaker 1: of the big tech companies. But Lena really kicks out
Speaker 1: of the conversation. So I was very excited when she
Speaker 1: agreed to join us on the show. These technologies are complicated.
Speaker 1: There are oftentimes involved in multiple lines of business, and
Speaker 1: so for many everyday people, including lawmakers, they don't actually
Speaker 1: understand and how these firms operate. According to Lena, the
Speaker 1: big three Amazon, Facebook, and Google have one thing in common.
Speaker 1: They've emerged as gatekeepers of the digital economy. Amazon, Google
Speaker 1: and Facebook are in a position where they can really
Speaker 1: pick winners and losers, especially among the merchants or the
Speaker 1: content producers or the app developers that are now reliant
Speaker 1: on their platform to get to market. So if you're
Speaker 1: a consumer, you're primarily thinking about price, about convenience, about quality, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if the fact, if you're a new parent
Speaker 1: and you can just order diapers and they'll be reliably
Speaker 1: at your doorstep the next morning, there's no doubt that
Speaker 1: Amazon has provided important benefits to consumers. But if you're
Speaker 1: thinking about the company as a citizen, and you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the market power that it has, if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the way that it was able to avoid paying
Speaker 1: sales taxes for the first years that it was in business,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at the way in which Amazon or
Speaker 1: distorted its searched for its second headquarters, where it was
Speaker 1: pretty ruthlessly pitting city against city and showing that it
Speaker 1: was really willing to extort municipalities try and get the
Speaker 1: biggest subsidy possible, and then ended up playing a bit
Speaker 1: of a bait and switch where it collected all of
Speaker 1: this information from all of these different cities, which now
Speaker 1: inevitably will give it a competitive advantage. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just so many different dimensions of Amazon's dominance that are troubling.
Speaker 1: If there was any doubt about Amazon's power to compel politicians,
Speaker 1: the search for the second headquarters should have cleared it up.
Speaker 1: And now Amazon is beginning to build leverage over the
Speaker 1: federal government. There have been reports from the Institute for
Speaker 1: Local Self Reliance about how Amazon is now on the
Speaker 1: cusp of receiving potentially a big contract with the Pentagon Um.
Speaker 1: So it's just entrenching itself deeper and deeper into our
Speaker 1: daily lives in ways that if you just look at
Speaker 1: an isolation, you will miss the bigger picture. But I
Speaker 1: think as a citizen and as somebody who's looking at
Speaker 1: the social and political implications of this, it's quite troubling.
Speaker 1: I'm very struck Carab by Lena's distinction between being a
Speaker 1: consumer and being a citizen, because of course, as consumers,
Speaker 1: we always want the best price and the most convenience.
Speaker 1: But it's fascinating to think that that can be directly
Speaker 1: at odds with our responsibilities and even our interests as citizens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of readers who love
Speaker 1: independent bookstores have this problem. You know, do I order
Speaker 1: on Amazon because I want the book tomorrow and because
Speaker 1: it's cheap and because I'm trying to save money, or
Speaker 1: do I buy it at the independent bookstore where you know,
Speaker 1: I've gone and loved for years. So yeah, I always
Speaker 1: think about that. But you know, I think we also
Speaker 1: have to think about shareholders and politicians when we talk
Speaker 1: about this. Amazon shareholders are trying to keep Amazon from
Speaker 1: selling Amazon's recognition technology to the US government, But those
Speaker 1: same shareholders are profiting off of Amazon success, So we
Speaker 1: really can't always rely on shareholders to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, those shareholders who don't want Amazon to sell
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology to the government are actually acting against
Speaker 1: them interests, and that's an anomaly, which is why we
Speaker 1: have government theoretically. But remember the Facebook Senate hearings. I mean,
Speaker 1: the senators did a terrible job of holding Zuckerberg to account.
Speaker 1: Mr Zuckerberg, I remember well your first visit to Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill back in two thousand and ten, you spoke to
Speaker 1: the Senate Republican high Tech tasks for us, which I
Speaker 1: chare You said back then that Facebook would always be free.
Speaker 1: How do you sustain a bitteress model in which users
Speaker 1: don't play for your service? Senator, we run ads? Nice, see, Senator,
Speaker 1: we run ads. That was Mark Zuckerberg's response to Senator
Speaker 1: orn Hatch, which was probably the low point in a
Speaker 1: series of low points in those Senate hearings, and also
Speaker 1: the moment that really maybe want to make this podcast
Speaker 1: because clearly the people who have the power and duty
Speaker 1: to question the big technology companies are either being deredicted
Speaker 1: their responsibilities or they simply don't understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure which is worse. Part of the
Speaker 1: issue with the Senate is that collectively they are a
Speaker 1: million years old, um. But part of it is also
Speaker 1: that they all rely on Facebook ads and pages for reelection,
Speaker 1: and they want Facebook money in their states. That's what
Speaker 1: we call a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest and
Speaker 1: a friend of mine from university literally wrote the book
Speaker 1: on this issue. It's called Future Politics. He's a lawyer
Speaker 1: called Jamie Suskind. It's an ancient idea in human civilization
Speaker 1: that we don't allow great forms of power to be
Speaker 1: erected over us without some degree of transparency, so we
Speaker 1: know what's being done with technology. It's very early days,
Speaker 1: but we need to look at the stuff as citizens
Speaker 1: like we would at any form of power that a
Speaker 1: cruise over our head, whether it's corporate power or political
Speaker 1: power or great economic power. One of the big problems,
Speaker 1: as Jamie sees it, is that as these big technology
Speaker 1: companies get involved with things like creating new drug or
Speaker 1: fighting terrorism. We start to talk about them as nation states,
Speaker 1: and we missed the mark. You know, you'll see journalists
Speaker 1: and commentators saying our tech firms are the new states,
Speaker 1: and I just think that's that's sloppy thinking they might
Speaker 1: have some stuff in common with states. But tech firms
Speaker 1: are commercial entities operating in a market system for the
Speaker 1: pursuit of profit and are answerable to their shareholders, which
Speaker 1: is obviously just a profoundly different social institution to a state.
Speaker 1: Kara mentioned that Amazon shareholders were pressuring the company to
Speaker 1: ban facial recognition software sales, but in late May of
Speaker 1: that measure was roundly defeated by a vote at the
Speaker 1: company's annual general meeting, so Amazon will continue selling facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology. And this highlights what Jamie is saying. These
Speaker 1: firms are motivated by profit, unlike states, which are motivated
Speaker 1: by protecting their citizens. Senator Elizabeth Warren has suggested one
Speaker 1: solution might be to treat the big technology companies like
Speaker 1: utility companies, things like regulating price and access. But Jamie
Speaker 1: thinks this actually underplays just how powerful and consequential these
Speaker 1: companies really are. They're not like utility firms. The water
Speaker 1: company doesn't get you to do things you wouldn't otherwise do.
Speaker 1: It doesn't affect the democratic process, it doesn't set the
Speaker 1: limits of your liberty, and it doesn't distribute things of
Speaker 1: importance throughout society according to principles of justice, which are
Speaker 1: all things that I would say that tech firms now do.
Speaker 1: So rowing back, we don't really have the words to
Speaker 1: describe what a tech firm is conceptually and politically, and
Speaker 1: so it's no wonder that we're not coming up with
Speaker 1: policies and regulations and laws because we don't even have
Speaker 1: the words to describe the future, even if we could
Speaker 1: see it. When we come back, we investigate that future
Speaker 1: and ask what we can do to regain some control. So, Kara,
Speaker 1: everyone is now thinking a lot about the role of
Speaker 1: technology in our lives, and one of the popular things
Speaker 1: recently has been for reporters to try and live without technology.
Speaker 1: I feel like phone detox is the new weight watchers,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of sick of it. But Kashmir Hill
Speaker 1: did this really interesting story for Gizmoto where she tried
Speaker 1: not to use any products from the big five tech companies.
Speaker 1: You know, she blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple,
Speaker 1: and she said it was hell, you know, I think
Speaker 1: about my own life, Google and Amazon are absolutely indispensable
Speaker 1: to me. And then there are times where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't really use Facebook that much, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a public restroom at two pm on
Speaker 1: Instagram and sort of check on my there's Facebook, right,
Speaker 1: And I think what Kashmir Hills story also revealed is
Speaker 1: that even when we think we're not using one of
Speaker 1: those companies products, we may well be using a website
Speaker 1: or an app that's powered by them. So it's basically
Speaker 1: impossible to opt out his Lina again, if what you
Speaker 1: mean by opt out is you know, not have an
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime account or not have Gmail. You know, there
Speaker 1: may be ways in which you can stop using these
Speaker 1: services in a day to day sense, But Amazon also
Speaker 1: owns Amazon Web Services UM, which you know much of
Speaker 1: the Internet now relies on. Google is providing the back
Speaker 1: end infrastructure for so many other services. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if you're trying to UM, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to delete these firms from all aspects of
Speaker 1: your life, it actually becomes very difficult to live in
Speaker 1: modern day society and Like we said, this applies to
Speaker 1: all of the Big five, but let's play it out
Speaker 1: with Amazon and we can start with the easy stuff.
Speaker 1: So Kara, no more things for the kitchen from Amazon
Speaker 1: dot Com well as Walmart. Um, no more groceries from
Speaker 1: Whole Foods. Can we afford it anyway? Um? And no
Speaker 1: more Amazon Prime Video. Sad to miss Mrs Mazel But
Speaker 1: how the Netflix you know you like mazel us Um.
Speaker 1: I think the consumer facing stuff is obviously interesting, but
Speaker 1: the more consequential piece of this is the back end
Speaker 1: of the Internet. You know, Lena was talking about Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services, which is like the cloud computing, the powers
Speaker 1: so many of the services we use every day, and
Speaker 1: Amazon basically sells this to other companies. So actually, without
Speaker 1: this back end from Amazon, there is no Netflix, Unilever, Visor,
Speaker 1: General Electric. These companies all rely on Amazon Web Services.
Speaker 1: So does NASA, where I went to space camp sort of.
Speaker 1: And even Apple, who compete with Amazon in areas like
Speaker 1: streaming and devices, are also on track to spend more
Speaker 1: than three hundred million dollars with Amazon this year. So
Speaker 1: Apple are paying literally one of their competitors to host
Speaker 1: their data. Yes, so if you're using the Internet, you're
Speaker 1: in Amazon's territory. Territory is a good word. One of
Speaker 1: the more interesting analogies I've heard is, well, I'll just
Speaker 1: let Jack Clark say it. I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: analogous to feudalism. Like you and I get to live
Speaker 1: on some sort of a state like Google or Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter. You know, via state is owned by a
Speaker 1: few you door lord, which is the owners of these
Speaker 1: companies and their boards, and the estate is able to
Speaker 1: extract my labor benefit from it, and what it gives
Speaker 1: me is stability. Jack is the policy director of Open Ai,
Speaker 1: an AI research company founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman.
Speaker 1: When Jack says labor, he's referring to use a data Now,
Speaker 1: part of open eyes mission is to compete with the
Speaker 1: AI labs at Google, Facebook, and Amazon. So Jack might
Speaker 1: not be fully impartial, But let's think about that comparison
Speaker 1: to feudalism. If you're a peasant in a village owned
Speaker 1: by a feudal lord, you had some guarantee of stability
Speaker 1: as long as you stayed on that platform, but you
Speaker 1: couldn't leave the platform. And actually, as early as the
Speaker 1: thirteenth century, English peasants were being required to carry identification
Speaker 1: cards because people would get really really grump you affirm
Speaker 1: if they walked off the estate there on and tried
Speaker 1: to go somewhere else. And I think that's actually very
Speaker 1: similar to where we are today. We don't have possible
Speaker 1: data our our ability to economically benefit ourselves with our
Speaker 1: data is actually very very limited, and we live in
Speaker 1: this kind of neo feudal system where you get to
Speaker 1: pick your platform, they get all of the data of
Speaker 1: the benefit, and you get some free service in exchange.
Speaker 1: So we perceive what we're getting from these companies as
Speaker 1: free car and all we have to do is tolerate
Speaker 1: a few advertisements. But as we talked about, we're not
Speaker 1: just giving them our eyeballs to look at ads. No,
Speaker 1: we're allowing them to understand our patterns, behaviors, and desires
Speaker 1: better than we understand them ourselves. And then they're using
Speaker 1: that knowledge about us to hold our attention, influence our behavior,
Speaker 1: and monetize us and sell us stuff that we don't need.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, historically leaders have killed for
Speaker 1: this sort of power influence, and we're handing over now
Speaker 1: freely to Bazos and Zuckerberg and Larry page. We're eroding
Speaker 1: our power as citizens because it's easier and more comfortable
Speaker 1: to be consumers. I think it's important to remember that
Speaker 1: the same place where a person can by a twelve
Speaker 1: pack of toilet paper is also the same company that
Speaker 1: is selling Amazon Web services to the Pentagon. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's sobering. It is sobering. We focus a
Speaker 1: lot on how the big technology companies are powered by
Speaker 1: our data, but there's something else this as well. Jack
Speaker 1: Clark of open ai argues that it's distracting us this
Speaker 1: focus on data from something even more fundamental. Who owns
Speaker 1: the computing power? Now. A bet that we have is
Speaker 1: that the value of those large amounts of data is
Speaker 1: going to reduce over time as you develop algorithms that
Speaker 1: are better able to extract structure from smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: amounts of data. But you're always going to need compute
Speaker 1: to allow you to run more experiments and train bigger systems.
Speaker 1: So we think in the long term compute might be
Speaker 1: the key determiner of AI progress. Just to clarify, compute
Speaker 1: is short for computing power, the ability to process large
Speaker 1: amounts of data. It's what's needed to help loons loons
Speaker 1: model and catch the winds, and a sale mentioned Google
Speaker 1: used so much of it that they build their massive
Speaker 1: data centers next to rivers so they can use hydro
Speaker 1: electric energy to power them. And compute has grown at
Speaker 1: an extraordinary rate as we've become able to make smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller circuit boards and pack more power into smaller cases.
Speaker 1: Now openly, I recently did an analysis where we looked
Speaker 1: at the amount of compute that had been used in
Speaker 1: breakthrough AI systems in recent years. And when we did
Speaker 1: this analysis, we found out that the the amount of
Speaker 1: compute has grown by three hundred thousand times in six years.
Speaker 1: Three hundred thousand times in six years. What does that
Speaker 1: mean in practical terms? What does that growth actually look like? Well,
Speaker 1: I think a better measure here is to think about
Speaker 1: your phone battery. That's equivalent to your phone going from
Speaker 1: having a battery that lasted for one day six years
Speaker 1: ago to a battery that lasted for eight hundred years today.
Speaker 1: That's what that growth looks like, and it means that
Speaker 1: more power for capabilities are coming into view faster than
Speaker 1: we expect. It's that kind of growth that's allowed a
Speaker 1: fleet of loon balloons to model the winds, adjust their
Speaker 1: altitude and sail to precise locations. But the computational power
Speaker 1: is in the hands of the private sector, and that
Speaker 1: is dramatically increasing their power. We have brilliant people come
Speaker 1: and work with us from places like you know, m
Speaker 1: I T or Stanford, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: attracts them to work here, or attracts them to work
Speaker 1: at a Google or a Facebook, is we can give
Speaker 1: them more computers and they can get their home institution.
Speaker 1: I think if we don't solve this disparity, we're going
Speaker 1: to really wreck the public benefits of scientific research because
Speaker 1: you're going to have a whole class of research which
Speaker 1: only occurs in the private sector, and therefore there are
Speaker 1: very few guarantees but that research will always be public.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, President Trump announced an executive order called
Speaker 1: the American AI Initially IF that laid out a plan
Speaker 1: to address some of the concerns we've raised in this episode,
Speaker 1: but it didn't come with any funding, So innovation and
Speaker 1: ethical decisions will remain in private hands for the time being,
Speaker 1: and this means that AI technology isn't guaranteed to serve
Speaker 1: the public interest and may even get into the wrong hands.
Speaker 1: I think for the first step we as a community
Speaker 1: need to take is to acknowledge potential harms. And once
Speaker 1: we have that mindset, I think it becomes easier to
Speaker 1: sell the scientific community on Okay, we have a sense
Speaker 1: of what harm looks like, what do we commit ourselves
Speaker 1: to minimize that? So, yeah, that conversation has to happen.
Speaker 1: I think if that conversation does not happen, then you're
Speaker 1: going to have this arms race absent the conscious creation
Speaker 1: of norms here. I think that that's for default, and
Speaker 1: that default world terrifies me because I can see AI
Speaker 1: research today that in two or three years is going
Speaker 1: to give us, say, unprecedented capabilities in drone autonomy, that
Speaker 1: to drone navigate to a target in a small urban area. Now,
Speaker 1: that's obviously an amazingly good thing. If we want to
Speaker 1: create rapid response drones that can deliver, say, tools for
Speaker 1: dealing with cardiac arrest someone undergoing that on a city street,
Speaker 1: I don't want to think about the version of this
Speaker 1: where the drone has some explosive strap to it and
Speaker 1: it is being used to assassinate somewhat. And I want
Speaker 1: to have the AI community confront this problem. But the
Speaker 1: AI community won't be able to do this alone. We
Speaker 1: need our politicians to step up and create meaningful laws
Speaker 1: and regulations. Ultimately, rely on tech companies to regulate themselves
Speaker 1: is an abdication of responsibility. Here's Lena Can again. The
Speaker 1: dominance of these tech companies is not inevitable, and none
Speaker 1: of the economic outcomes that we're seeing in these markets
Speaker 1: are inevitable, and they're deeply shaped by laws and policy
Speaker 1: and the political choices that we're making about how we
Speaker 1: allow these firms to expand and grown kinds of practices
Speaker 1: they're allowed to engage in. So I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to push back against determinism and inevitability narratives and
Speaker 1: reassert the role of law and policy in shaping economic outcomes.
Speaker 1: There's an important balance between public and private institutions in America,
Speaker 1: and letting either side grow too powerful creates problems. But
Speaker 1: right now, the big technology companies are becoming so large
Speaker 1: and powerful as to be ungovernable, and no matter how
Speaker 1: ethical or what intention they may be, they're not motivated
Speaker 1: by fairness or protecting the weakest in society. They're motivated
Speaker 1: by shareholders and profit that may seem like an insurmountable problem.
Speaker 1: But we have a history in this country of making
Speaker 1: laws that disrupt special interests and raise the quality of
Speaker 1: life for everyone. Think about the formation of the e
Speaker 1: p A, the New Deal, even the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 1: And actually, just this week, as we've been preparing to
Speaker 1: release this episode, the House Judiciary Committee has launched a
Speaker 1: major bipartisan and trust investigation into the big tech companies.
Speaker 1: This is the first time in decades that Congress has
Speaker 1: investigated a specific industry. And who is advising the investigation, Well,
Speaker 1: that would be Lena con Yeah. We got in touch
Speaker 1: with Lena to hear about our thoughts on the probe
Speaker 1: and what we might be able to expect from the investigation,
Speaker 1: but she's not able to comment publicly yet. Still, she's
Speaker 1: said a couple of interesting things in our original interview.
Speaker 1: The goal of anti trust is to keep markets competitive.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important because it affects us as consumers,
Speaker 1: it affects us as workers, it affects us an entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: and it affects us a citizens. Right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the structure of our economy has huge consequences for
Speaker 1: our day to day lives, and anti trust is a
Speaker 1: key component of that. If we saw more robust anti
Speaker 1: trust enforcement, then these markets should become more open to competition,
Speaker 1: and so in ten years you would not necessarily see Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple,
Speaker 1: Microsoft continue to be as dominant as they are, because
Speaker 1: we would have seen innovators. We would have seen the
Speaker 1: next wave of of the breakthrough disruptors. I think it's
Speaker 1: also worth acknowledging that the dominant these firms enjoy is
Speaker 1: certain markets maybe something that we regulate rather than addressed
Speaker 1: through breaking up. So since we've started working on Sleepwalkers,
Speaker 1: there has been tangible progress, both in the US and
Speaker 1: around the world. But this is only the beginning and
Speaker 1: we can't relax just yet. In the next episode, we
Speaker 1: bring things down to earth and look at how AI
Speaker 1: may help us feed the world, and along the way,
Speaker 1: we use machine learning to invent a brand new Seltzer
Speaker 1: flavor just for us. I'm a veloshen see you next time.
Speaker 1: Sleepwalkers is a production of our heart radio and unusual
Speaker 1: productions for the latest AI news, live interviews, and behind
Speaker 1: the scene in footage. Find us on Instagram, at Sleepwalker's
Speaker 1: Podcast or at Sleepwalker's podcast dot com. Special thanks this
Speaker 1: episode to the whole team at Weird Moved West, an
Speaker 1: incredible production company in El Paso, Texas, who helped us
Speaker 1: track down an interview Officer Castillo about his encounter with
Speaker 1: the Loon Balloon. Special shout out to j W. Rogers,
Speaker 1: Jorge carry On, asail Anya and Leonel Portillo, who voiced
Speaker 1: Officer Castillo's translated lines. Sleepwalkers is hosted by me Ozveloshin
Speaker 1: and co hosted by me Kara Price, with produced by
Speaker 1: Julian Weller with help from Jacopo Penzo and Taylor Chacogne,
Speaker 1: mixing by Tristan McNeil and Julian Weller. Our story editor
Speaker 1: is Matthew Riddle. Recording assistance this episode from Miguel Paris
Speaker 1: and Chris Handbrake. Sleepwalkers is executive produced by me Ozveloshin
Speaker 1: and Mangesh Hattikiler. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.