Ex-Twitter AI Ethicist Warns: The 2016 Data You Forgot About is Now Dangerous

Are we giving up our freedom for convenience without realizing it? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, a globally recognized AI ethics leader featured in Time and Forbes, to unpack the real risks of artificial intelligence, Big Tech power, and data privacy. As the former Head of AI Ethics at Twitter and Accenture, Dr. Chowdhury shares an insider perspective on how Big Tech is consolidating power, why narratives around AGI and “AI intelligence” are often misleading, and how everyday tools from apps to social media, are quietly shaping a surveillance-driven ecosystem. This conversation dives into AI ethics, surveillance, and the future of work, and explores why trust in AI is declining even as adoption accelerates. We also break down the real-world implications of AI, and most importantly, how you can protect your data, reclaim your agency, and use AI more intentionally. In this video: 00:00 Intro 01:16 What’s wrong with AI today 02:18 Why people trust AI less every year 03:09 Big tech vs the technology itself 04:22 Dangerous narratives about AI 06:09 Anthropomorphism and moral outsourcing 07:40 The myth of AGI and profit motives 09:20 The economics behind AI power 11:21 Consumer responsibility and the privacy paradox 13:42 “I have nothing to hide” explained 15:04 How big tech is consolidating control 16:42 What consumers should actually do 18:30 Real-world consequences of data misuse 21:05 From Pokémon Go to surveillance systems 22:29 The dilemma of social media and platforms 26:05 Can AI still be used for good 28:20 Algorithms, manipulation, and loss of agency 30:12 Inside AI ethics at Twitter 33:48 Why leadership and trust are changing 35:17 Surveillance capitalism and public backlash 37:31 How to think strategically about AI 41:19 Finding agency and intentional use of AI 45:06 Will society push back against AI power 52:02 The role of AI ethicists and builders 56:41 The future of work and automation reality 01:01:32 Why expertise and discernment matter most 01:06:35 Advice for business leaders using AI 01:11:33 Final thoughts on agency and discernment Connect with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rumman/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rumman_c/?hl=en Our links: Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I played this innocent game in like 2016. That data lives forever and ever. And over a decade later, it's being used with a technology that didn't exist at the time for an incomprehensible evil.

• 0:19Geoff Nielson?

  Hey, everyone. I'm super excited to be talking to Dr. Ramon Chowdhury. She's a former leader of AI ethics at Accenture and Twitter. Remember Twitter? And recognized by publications like Time and Forbes as an absolute leading voice in how we use AI. Look, we all have our concerns with big tech, but she has actually been in charge of trying to make AI companies more accountable and been fired for it, which I think is a badge of honor. I really want to know what her biggest concerns around AI and big tech are right now, what stories about AI we need to reject, and if there's a responsible way to use this technology at all. It should be an amazing conversation. Let's jump in.

• 1:03Geoff Nielson?

  Thanks so much for joining today. Really, really excited to have you. And maybe just to kick things off, I wanted to ask a broad question just around, you know, what concerns you most around the state of AI right now?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  A consolidation of power, lack of agency, which technically are two things that are really one thing, right? So fewer and fewer people hold more and more power, and we have less and less say about what's getting built and how it's being built and what it's being used for.

• 1:32Geoff Nielson?

  So when you say lack of agency, you mean as kind of consumers or users of AI are, you know, stake in this or ability to direct it?

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. And, you know, to be very explicit with it, it is overwhelmingly clear that people do not want AI in many of their consumer goods and products. They do not trust it. They understand what the technology is being used for and other use cases. They understand how their data is being used in ways that they have not approved of. So it's not really a disagreement with the tech, fundamental technology. It's a disagreement with the power structures, right? So I think recently there's a poll everyone's talking about where, I think it was like, what, 74, like some like really High percentage of people, uh, you know, ranked the use of AI very, very low aligned with people's sentiments on ICE. So that's been the running joke in tech that like, wow, we actually hate AI more than we dislike ICE.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Just like as a population in America or like right around on par and you know, there's no love lost between the average American and ICE. So, um, and this is just one in a series of many surveys that have been going on for years and years. And just to point to another one, uh, there's been a Pew study that's been ongoing and every year for the past few years, Americans' trust in AI systems has declined and more and more people say that it will bring more harm than do good, which is like the very explicit thing they are responding to that like more and more people believe every year that this technology will do more harm than good. So yeah, when I say agency, it's very clear that people don't want it and yet all we are seeing are new AI launches.

• 3:09Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and that feels like, you know, especially that Pew survey, it feels like to me more of an indictment of the power structure and of big tech

• 3:17Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 3:18Geoff Nielson?

  than of the technology itself, right? It's saying, we don't trust the institutions that are, that are behind this. Yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  That is exactly correct. And again, people are very clear as to why, and that is exactly why. I, I sometimes CEOs interpret it and Silicon Valley certainly, certainly interprets, interprets it as, oh, the average people doesn't understand what AI is capable of. I think they do understand what AI is capable of and they're willing to say, yeah, this is like a cool toy and maybe it could do some impressive things. I am not willing to give up my personal liberty and the rights of the people around me so that I can have a calendar agent, you know?

• 3:57Geoff Nielson?

  So, so with that in mind and the big tech perspective, I mean, one of the things that's interesting here is there's just, there's so much noise. There's so many voices. There's so many conflicting narratives about, you know, what AI can do, what it can't do, what the future looks like, how it's going to impact, you know, people's lives and their livelihoods and very different incentives, uh, from the actors behind some of these voices. If they're trying to get you to adopt the tool or trying to sell their own services and you and I both exist, you know, within this ecosystem to some degree. But, but I'm curious. If there's any particular narratives that you're hearing pushed by the creators of AI

• 4:38Geoff Nielson?

  that that you think are dangerous and that you specifically want to call out that we need to reject?

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, the big one really is, well, there's two. One is just the general anthropomorphism of the technology. And frankly, I see that coming more from the quote unquote good guys, i.e. Anthropic, than I hear it coming from OpenAI. And I, you know, I coined a phrase years ago in the days of narrow AI called it moral outsourcing. And we're seeing moral outsourcing at play, right? The intent of using language that is humanizing of AI. Like AI models are built as a design decision for it to speak to you and say things like, I feel, I think, I'm sorry, I understand. One does not do any of those things, right? That is a specific design decision to anthropomorphize the technology. Number one, it it then it alienates us, right?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  From connecting this tool as something that somebody has built. And it makes us think fearful of it because we think that it is this big scary, super intelligent thing. But then also importantly for these companies, when, you know, an AI system goes wrong, they can conveniently say in all the headlines, say, AI model erases company database versus saying this product failed, which is how it would be stated in just about any other use case. If you had, you know, a server and it caught fire, you wouldn't say server deletes data by spontaneously combusting. Like, it sounds so dumb, but that's how we talk about AI agents that take action that have done things.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Again, we blame this technology as simply executing a command and maybe the command was poorly specified or we haven't been able to like ring fence bad decisions. But and again, like Anthropic is particularly guilty of saying things like intent manipulation. You know, they have set up an entire team to look at the welfare of the AI itself, which is mind boggling to me. And all of this is theater. It's it's theater.

• 6:40Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and it's interesting that Anthropic is doing it, you know, of all people. And as you said, I mean, I think it's, at least from where we're sitting right now. Yeah, I think the good guy moniker probably does apply more to them than everybody else. But, but why is that? There's a story, not why is it a good guy moniker? Why are they doing all these performative actions around AI? And I guess, you know, I had a slightly different perspective because when I see all this anthropomorphization of AI, to me, the motive is extremely clear. It's just to make it, to influence people's behavior and make it more engaging and try to just keep people using the technology for longer. So, but why are good guys falling into this trap?

• 7:25Geoff Nielson?

  Good guys?

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, quote unquote, good guys, right? Which I, I too use. I think it serves them very well, which goes to kind of the second thing that I think is the most dangerous thing being pushed. And it's actually a book project that I'm working on and something I've just gotten really interested in, which is this idea of intelligence, right? So they want us to believe that this thing that exhibits signs of sentience and will, according to their words, also is smarter and better than us at all of the things and will take over everything that we are doing. And really, what is, what is hidden under that narrative is, you know, the slippery slope definition of AGI. If you ask the average person on the street what they think artificial general intelligence is, they'll probably point to a movie like Terminator or Her and be like, oh my God, what artificial general intelligence is?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Is this AI system that's able to interact just like a person? But then for those of us, which, and I think you've seen this too, there's been a slippery slope of what that's been defined as. And now it is only defined in economic terms, like OpenAI was calling it the automation of all tasks of economic value, right? And why? Why, why identify? Because they want to make money. So it hides this profit, you know, this like profiteering perspective and it makes them seem like they are pursuing this noble mission for humanity and humanity's growth, rather than saying, oh no, we're just trying to automate the work people are doing so we can further consolidate wealth and power amongst ourselves.

• 8:53Geoff Nielson?

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• 9:20Geoff Nielson?

  Maybe I'm just closer to it, but to me, it's extremely obvious that the motive is exclusively economic, right? It's just how can you own this platform under what everybody is doing?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  That's correct.

• 9:33Geoff Nielson?

  You know, why would you hire employees when you could hire this employee replacement that we own?

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:38Geoff Nielson?

  And see, it's the same.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  Right. And there's no, to them, it's like, there's no messiness, right? There's no human messiness involved. Yeah, like Silicon Valley is such a weird place. But like, tech people hate humanity. They hate dealing with people. And like, some of it's, you know, kind of funny. I used to joke that, like, especially in the 2010, like, the 2000s and the 2010s, a lot of the startups that were built were kind of built to like, avoid dealing with messy human things. Like, I don't want to cook food. I'm going to get delivery. I don't want to drive myself somewhere. I don't want to do my laundry. So like, that kind of startup of like, automating the mundane human things. It's even in the language, right?

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Currently biohacking is sort of a big thing. I mean, it's a big thing kind of everywhere, but transhumanism, it all originates out of Silicon Valley. And like, what is it specifically saying, right? It's specifically saying that like, your human functions of like, sleep, as an example, aging, or just being tired, these are inefficiencies. Like, it's bad to be a human. And like, can you get rid of that? So a lot of this, and you're 100% correct, is trying to create this AI workforce. It's like, God, I don't want to deal with like, pregnant women and someone's got to pick up their kids and like, somebody who has a cold. Like, it's annoying, right? People's feelings are annoying. You know, rather than seeing a lot of human messiness as a way of bringing value,

• 11:04Speaker 00

  which, by the way, it is, right? Institutional knowledge is a thing. There's a reason why you can't just like, fire someone who's been at a company for 20 years or place them with a kid fresh out of a PhD program and assume they're the same. And it's going to be the same, and we're seeing the same for agents as well.

• 11:21Geoff Nielson?

  So I want to push on all of that a little bit. And by the way, I agree with everything you just said. The piece I want to push on is there's a lot of emphasis there on the supplier side or the provider side of all these tools versus the consumer side. And one of the things that's troubling, troubling is the word I'll choose, is that there does seem to be a lot of widespread adoption, you know, both of AI, but you know, when you talk about all these like friction reducing apps that take away, you know, the humanity and things. They've seen widespread adoption, right? Like that that demand is there. And so I'm curious, what if any onus you put on, you know, the consumer of these?

• 12:07Geoff Nielson?

  And, and, you know, I don't, I don't know, like, what does that ecosystem look like for you in a better world?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I love that you're asking that question because I think a failure state is saying like the company has to do all of the things. And because they push back and say, well, the market doesn't say it's right. Meta, like Zuckerberg used to call it the privacy paradox. I think it was coined by him or by Meta at least. Where like, you know, they're like, okay, well, all of you advocates say people want privacy, but I overwhelmingly see that when I try to get people to use privacy, they don't want them. They just want to be like, yep, permissions, moving on, right? And so there's two things. One is I actually think younger generations like are building in friction because they kind of want it. I think we, we are starting to kind of come full circle where, and I can just anecdotally tell you about a lot of like,

• 12:54Speaker 00

  like TikTok influencers, et cetera. I've seen their methods shifting over time from volume and easy to access to be more curated. So think of this as the difference of difference between like how a lot of people are moving off of major social media platforms and moving into lots of like Signal groups or Telegram groups or WhatsApp groups. It's kind of like, and that is more friction, right? I can sit there and passively just scroll and look at stuff that's, you know, feeding me junk food. Or I can be in like 30 different Signal and WhatsApp groups, which is way messier, but more rich. And I think we are kind of seeing people are understanding the value of that. But to your point, like to Additionally, people just want things to make their lives easier. In many cases, they are. And I do think there's an onus on the consumer. I think many of us have been saying for years and years and years,

• 13:38Speaker 00

  you know, like protect your privacy. You never know what your data is going to be used for. And the pushback was always, I have nothing to hide. I think, you know, we're in the finding out phase of all of that where it's like, oh, you thought you had nothing to hide when you were playing Pokemon Go. But guess what? When you played Pokemon Go, that is now being used to generate the surveillance state. And it is a clear line. It's not an abstraction. So I think, you know, people are, people have been hearing this story for years for whom, again, saying like you should protect your data was an abstraction, are now seeing how their data is being used because the lines are being drawn. And I'm curious to see, you know, what sort of consumer protections pop up, which by the way, I'll also add one more thing.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  That's also why they're all trying to consolidate their power, right? They are, they are trying to own the horizontal. You know, what like Sam Altman funding, you know, WorldCoin was not born out of some like, you know, good for humanity and like, you know, because he realized that the, the technology that he has helped ushered in will completely erode trust. Um, because the ability to create realistic defects will get to the point where you will need biometric identification. So just the idea of WorldCoin and making people scan their biometrics was him collecting a database. So that when he needs to own the privacy part of things, he gets to own that too. It's a horizontal that he's trying to build.

• 15:03Geoff Nielson?

  Right. He gets, he gets to profit off solving the problem that he himself.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Correct. That he created, right? Like coming and going. And also the investment in data centers, investment in minerals. One of the theories, I don't know how valid this theory is about like, you know, trying to get Greenland was that there were specific rare minerals to be mined there that a bunch of the tech CEOs had invested in the startup that specifically was going to be based. Again, like the, I don't want to like go into like red strings. Uh, but it's really hard not to in this space because many of our red strings have proven to be true.

• 15:40Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, well, and, you know, I've said in a lot of these conversations, we're not a political podcast. We're a technology podcast, but the line seems to get blurry and blurrier these days.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  You can't, right, like you truly cannot, you know, like one of our, one of our most infamous CEOs, you know, Elon Musk, held a pretty prominent position in the current administration. We know, like, they don't divorce technology and, and politics. Why should we?

• 16:05Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, I think that's well said. So I want, I want to come back to this, um, the consumer side and people maybe not appreciating that, as you said, it's not abstractions. A lot of their decisions that we as consumers are making are being, they're, they're creating the society that we have and that we're going to have. And so if I can frame it up this way for you, if you were going to have a message to consumers saying basically, you know, wake up, that, you know, this is what you need to know, what, what would be kind of your, you know, pithy message around what you want people to be focusing on right now?

• 16:42Speaker 00

  Hmm, gosh, that's a good question. Um,

• 16:49Speaker 00

  hmm, you know, maybe it's just something very basic about just app hygiene and data privacy. Like just go into your phone, go into all of your settings and just maximize all of your protections. You know, if you can afford it, you know, buy, you know, get a VPN service, you know, like in our house, we have something called a pie hole, which like plays a Raspberry Pi tool that blocks all the ads coming in. Like if you have the capability, just do it. Maybe, I guess like my pithy way of saying it is, explore the world of products, tools and services that are now exploding around protecting your privacy, security and data.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Because there actually are a surprising number of things that have come up, especially in the last few years. Some of it requires a bit of tech skill. A lot of it does not. You just have to, it's not going to be number one in the app store because these are not massive, big funded companies. It's literally like two friends who felt passionate about data protection, literally, you know? Or it's comes out of the Raspberry Pi community, which is largely open source and, you know, built on subreddits. You know, so I, I guess I'd say that, like, explore the world of things that have popped up to help you protect your privacy. It's not, it is on you, but you don't have to do it alone.

• 18:09Geoff Nielson?

  So just along those lines, I want to go back to kind of painting the picture of the importance of this. And you know, you made an offhand comment about, you know, building the surveillance state. But I want to, you know, just kind of, as I said, paint the picture of why is this so important? Why is it so important to protect your privacy and your data? What are some of the, you know, malicious things that these organizations can be doing with it? And how do you see it kind of playing out for people in a negative way?

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. And again, I think people are have already seen so many examples play out. I was reminded of one of the very first talks I ever gave back in like 2017 about like some AI and ethics. And it was at Survey Monkey. And this is in Atlanta. And I don't know how we got here in the Q and A, but somebody mentioned something like 23andMe. And I'm like, oh, God, never use those. Like, you know, and this is again, 2017. Fast forward some years later, they're bankrupt and they're bought by private equity. And who knows how private equity is now going to use people's genetic data, right? And even even during their existence, they did, you know, questionable things like make a Spotify playlist based on your DNA. Truly, they did. I'm like,

• 19:23Speaker 00

  what? It's so they were trying to market it, right? So we have, we have seen this. And the latest is, you know, people pointing out, there's this like TikTok trend. There were two TikTok trends, like, sorry to be like so chronically online, but it's just interesting. I will take a step back and say, one of the most interesting things to me is that, you know, a lot of this narrative is being pushed by regular people to regular people. What I love is that it is not coming from me, the quote unquote, expert lecturing people from, you know, my space of like, I do this all day, every day. What I love is seeing just regular people saying, ah, you know, this seems suspicious. I'm so I'm so glad to see that because they're stating it in

• 20:06Speaker 00

  a way where it's like, hey, I'm a normal guy. And I'm telling you a normal person to do this, right? There are so many memes that are like, you know, you 10 years ago, or something like that. And people have pointed out that that can be used to databases, like whether it is or it isn't. But you know, the one I alluded to earlier, very specifically, many of us, myself included, in literally a time so long ago in our heads that it seems like a different millennia, played Pokemon Go. And it was actually a very beautiful thing. I loved Pokemon Go. What I loved was seeing how many families were out and kids were, you know,

• 20:45Speaker 00

  engaging with people in this very friendly way. And, you know, even I would have said, oh, it's just a game. Like, I used it. Well, hey, cool. Now I've, now we find out that Niantic has sold all of that data. That data is being used to literally, you know, map out surveillance in the United States. So you played an innocent game. I played this innocent game in like 2016. That data lives forever and ever. And over a decade later, it's being used with a technology that didn't exist at the time for an incomprehensible evil. And those are not like exaggerating exaggerated words.

• 21:27Geoff Nielson?

  It's, it's, it's such a sad development because I have, I have the same kind of, you know, fond memories as you do. Like I was out there years ago catching Pokemon. And it was like, it, in some ways, it was like a golden age. Like it just felt so carefree.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  It was amazing.

• 21:43Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Truly, yes.

• 21:45Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. Yeah. Weaponizing that is, I was just gonna say like the, the fact that it's been like weaponized is, is, is really, really depressing. But I want, I want to come back to um, these TikTok trends you're talking about. And specifically, I want to, I want to ask you about TikTok because, because TikTok is not a neutral player in this, right?

• 22:03Speaker 00

  It is not a neutral player.

• 22:04Geoff Nielson?

  They have an algorithm, they push content. There's, you know, not even to get into the geopolitics of TikTok. But, but I'm curious your posture around a tool like TikTok, uh, whether it's TikTok, whether it's, you know, some of its competitors.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 22:20Geoff Nielson?

  Do you recommend people use it? Should they not use it? Can they use it ethically or in an informed way? What should our relationship be with some of these tools?

• 22:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think what you're pointing at is like the exact manifestation of like just lacking agency. So I struggle in general with my relationship at social media, like in general. So I, you know, back in the beautiful days of Twitter was just hyper online. The entire field of responsible AI was built by people snarking on Twitter. That's how we all met each other and not just snarking. That's how we read each other's papers. It's how we interacted, right? Like we were all, there were not a lot of us that did this work. You know, when I first got started in 2017, there's still not even a lot of us. Everyone's everywhere. It was, it was beautiful. And I moved from being hyper online or hyper on Twitter to just not having a social media presence at all. I don't even really post on LinkedIn.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  But the reality is so much of the public discourse does happen on social media platforms. You know, at the same time, I do see how, again, like now that I've been, I would say I've been like pretty much offline, other than like very short stints on like LinkedIn or like playing around with TikTok since, you know, my team and I all got fired. Like for me, it was a principled stance and I'm not going to be on X. Why would I, why would I be there and, you know, have my data and my attention support this platform? You know, so like I am of two minds. Like it's hard for me to answer your question because like you're hearing my struggle in real time, right? Where I'm like, okay, there is this need as a professional, especially a public professional

• 23:59Speaker 00

  to be on these environments, be on this platform. On the other end, like we also know, just to bring in another narrative, that a lot of the news media is now captured by billionaires and we actually consider a lot of media to be untrustworthy. And social media has traditionally proven a place where you can try to find more objective sources, right? So it's, it's like all of these moving parts together. One is like lack of trust in centralized media institutions. Not that social media isn't that, but it's another version of that. Right? So there's that. There is like what we know to be this necessity of being online to just be aware of what's happening in the world or maybe even engage with your community of practice.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  And then there is this like evil that we know exists, right? And how do you, how do you reconcile the three? I wish I had NANSX, I don't. Like I, I wish I could just say it is unethical to use these platforms. Well, I can say that, but then I cannot in good faith say, therefore, don't use any of them ever. Because I do think it's fair to say that, you know, if you're a professional, you know, for example, my community now exists on LinkedIn. I don't really go on LinkedIn very much. Is that detrimental to me? Maybe. I don't know, because I can't measure the opportunity cost, right? I have no idea what the opportunity cost is. If I was chronically posting, you know, would I be interacting with more people? Would I have more knowledge? Would more consulting or speaking opportunities come my way? Maybe, probably, right?

• 25:27Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know. Um, but yeah, it's kind of a convoluted answer to your question. Because like I said, you're hearing real time what goes on in my head constantly whenever someone sends me a LinkedIn post or, or whatever.

• 25:40Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and, and what I did hear, and it made me reflect on is just how much of a bummer it is that a lot of these platforms used to be a place for independent discourse, not owned by, you know, mega corps. And they've been absorbed and it feels like, you know, I, I, I'd like to think a few years from now, we'll have some next wave somewhere else where we can have these discussions. That's independent again, because it just feels like we're in between and it's been usurped from us, right?

• 26:05Speaker 00

  I, I hope so. And actually, I think there is a way that, you know, one can use AI tools. In the way, so like, I've been playing with perplexity computer lately. Um, and I would say the joy that it brings to me is very similar to like when I was in high school. And the internet was like kind of this thing we were all learning. And like, if you like, remember who you were at the time that the internet kind of became a thing. And if you were interested in it, you're like, wow, I can learn anything. I can meet anyone like as like suspicious as all of that is, right? But there was a genuine like purity to it, like you said, and also like a joy

• 26:50Speaker 00

  to knowing that like information access at your fingertips. And, you know, I have felt like that playing with some of the agentic AI apps. And I've done, I like spent a couple of days, I just like setting up dumb things, right? Like, send me a Daily email with all of the eBooks on sale for Kindle and the genres that I like. And like, that has really bought me so much joy. I probably spend more on eBooks now because that thing is actually particularly good. But it is that there is this like way of using these tools where it's not about them telling you what to think or feel or what you need, but how we are then building, which is again, like kind of the mindset of the early internet.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  I think the difference here is the internet was free for us. Now we have to pay for tokens, which that's the part where it's like, oh, but you have actually robbed us of like a public good and like, that's how it's different. But like the, the mindset and the feeling I have is similar. But again, like another very difficult thing for me to reconcile.

• 27:54Geoff Nielson?

  No, no. And, and you know, I, I appreciate that it's not clean and it's not as simple as just don't use these tools. Um, you know, given your perspective and, and your experience. And, you know, again, I'm just, I'm just kind of reflecting on, you know, what you were saying about that. And to me, one of the other differences in my mind, and I'm curious on your thoughts, is that the internet was,

• 28:19Geoff Nielson?

  how, how do I want to frame this? Like the, the internet was more neutral in the sense that you could go on it and you really had full agency or close to it of what you're looking for. And these platforms and these algorithms in some way take that agency away from you because they are pushing you towards specific experiences. They want you to consume in a certain pattern. They want you to consume certain stuff. And so it feels like you have to be a lot more intentional about how you use these tools. If you're going to maintain that agency.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and to some extent it's exhausting because you, to your point, constantly have to pay attention to like, am I being manipulated in some way? Right? Is this information real? And it's, I, I think an analog way of thinking about it or a semi analog way is like how we don't just look at the New York Times and Washington Post and say, oh, that's the news. We're like, oh, that's the thing that Bezos. So of course they feel like this about this and let me go online and find if three other sources are talking about this. We now have a lot more work we have to do and we cannot approach it as innocently. And to your point, you know, one of the things that came up in discussion in Twitter amongst Twitter leadership, and I can't really name names, was kind of like the sentiment that it was unfair

• 29:36Speaker 00

  that social media companies were under all of this scrutiny to do content moderation because we never content moderated the internet. And just to give an example, like Nazis are allowed to have websites, but Nazis are supposed to be banned on social media. So like, not to say that anybody wants Nazis, but like, but to say that like, the, the rules seem to have applied differently. Because, but again, I think it's because the internet was born as this tool of free access to information that nobody owned and nobody paid for, or at least people do pay for it, but like, not in the way that like we are directly putting dollars into specifically accessing information.

• 30:12Geoff Nielson?

  I wanted to go back to this, you know, this experience you had at Twitter. And for listeners who don't know, you were a leader on the machine, machine learning, ethics, transparency and accountability team at Twitter. And I'll, you know, ask you this in a deliberately broad way, but you know, can you tell me a little bit about kind of your reflections on that time and you know, what you were trying to achieve and what it, what it taught you?

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, um, it's worth also thinking through like structurally where I was in the company.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  There are, there have been many teams that do this kind of work, you know, sort of infamously or famously at places like Google. There's still some at Microsoft, et cetera. My team at Twitter, at least for its time, was very unique. I was an engineering director and I sat on this team called Cortex, which is basically, if you know the structure of Twitter, it's where all of the machine learning and AI services were offered. So there are teams that own products, like a product could be like who to follow, right? And the, the core tools that they use to build who to follow came from the team that I was on. Why is that important? It is important. And that's why actually in some ways I took the job is because I was in the room with people building it. So I didn't have to ask permission.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  My colleagues and my peers were not, you know, policy and there's nothing wrong with like policy etc. But you're not in product. And to me, if you're in product, if you're in that room, then you have access and privileges that people on other kinds of teams have to fight for, right? So if you're a responsible AI team, as a pure research team, you don't own product and you don't influence product. Or if you want to, you have to fight for it to happen. Whereas I am just in the room. And when there was an engineering meeting, I'm just in that room because these are my peers. That's really important to like shaping how the tool is being built from design. So I've loved it. And also, the other thing I'll say about Twitter is somehow it kept that like weird, very millennial 2000 startup-y vibe, you know? Like, it's so corny, but like, in the best way possible.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It was a very corny company, but I loved it. And I, one thing I will say about a lot of Twitter employees, most Twitter employees, like, we knew we had a really difficult task and we knew we weren't going to get it right. And one of the things I loved about Twitter is they owned their mistakes, right? I think that's kind of what Twitter was famous for, is when Twitter would go down, they're like, sorry. Like, we done messed up.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  And that was, and I loved that. And around when I was interviewing was when

• 32:40Speaker 00

  there was, you know, like, citizen data science around potential algorithmic bias in the image cropping algorithm. I don't know if you remember this, but basically people realized that it seemed like the Twitter image cropping algorithm was cropping out darker skinned people. And, you know, it had already by then been demonstrably shown that these models underperform for people who are higher on the Fitzpatrick scale, so darker skin tone. So instead of doing what a lot of other companies do, which is sort of hide behind PR narratives, you had Dantley and Prag, so Prag was then the CTO, Dantley was then head of product, I believe, hopping in and being like, hey, guys, what are you seeing? Like, can you tell us about it? Like, I want to learn, you know, and they were very open. They were very responsive to criticism.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  And they promised to do something about it. And then they did, which is, again, so rare in general and so rare these days. And more and more as like we have become, there's like now this elite ruling godlike class of AI CEOs. I can't imagine these people having the kinds of interactions that Parag and Dantley had like four years ago. There's, I just, I don't, I don't see them doing that in an honest and open way. I could see them snarking. I could see them belittling people on social media. I don't think I, I can imagine them coming in and earnestly asking about a product flaw and trying to learn how to fix it.

• 34:07Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. Um, yeah, sorry. The reason, the, the reason I'm just like pausing and reflecting on that is I, I feel like it's like you can draw an arrow from that statement right back to the start of this conversation about what's going on in big tech.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:19Geoff Nielson?

  And also about, you know, the market, sorry, the market in terms of consumers, not the market in terms of investors. That's a whole other story that we can or cannot talk about. But, but this distrust in the products and in the tech is the, the leadership style. Like, like it feels like leaders are deliberately putting up those walls in a way that maybe they didn't 10 years ago. And I don't know, is, is that going to hurt them in the longer term? Is it going to pay off? It's, it's kind of fascinating.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think that sort of dodging and obfuscation does not in the long term benefit any CEO. I think maybe in the short term, it helps them because they get to avoid problems. You know, one of the best books, I would argue probably the best book in the space to understand, like this whole, this, like you said, it comes full circle is Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which like you really, like you could literally only, it's a very big book. It's like literally three inches thick, but you could just read the first chapter. And what she does beautifully is outline the strategy and the economic model of Silicon Valley, right? And part of that strategy is like playing this waiting game, right? Waiting until we as a public get exhausted with a topic. And, you know, the

• 35:36Speaker 00

  example she gives, something that I personally had forgotten, which was that when Google Maps first came out, people were Up in arms about it. They were really upset and people were protesting. They were stopping the cars. They were building higher fences and Google did not say or do anything about it. They they just kept their mouths shut. And what they waited for was for the momentum to die down. And I don't think any of us questioned. You know, the Google recording cars that we see driving around for maps anymore. And like, that really made me pause and reflect on actually how good that strategy can be. But I think again, AI is just, it is just so different. It's again, so much less abstract. It is especially with generative AI. It's in our hands. It's in our faces.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  We're seeing it play out real time. We're seeing it play out in a genocide. We're seeing it play out in the field of war. We're seeing it play out. You know, with protests, right? And again, like the technological and the political are the same thing now. That it's, I don't think that strategy works. I don't, I I think people are too smart now. I think there was a lot of naivety that we are now past. Uh, and I'm glad, I'm glad people are not naive about it anymore. But what they have now removed is our ability to make decisions, right? So one of the, one of the other studies of the many studies that point out how people don't want AI products is I think one consumer study. Showed that uh, product labels that said they had AI were purchased seventy four percent less.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  And then if they drop the label, so now they just drop the label. They don't drop the AI, right? So like the, they take the wrong thing away.

• 37:09Geoff Nielson?

  So uh, there there's a few different avenues I want to take here, but maybe let's start with with us as consumers. Like if we want to be more ethical about it, if we want to, you know, be building a better future here, like. What what do we do? Like, what's our, what's our kind of imperative? And how should we be thinking just about how we interact with these products? And I mean, you you said it yourself, like it's. It's it's not clean. It's not, it's not necessarily just, you know, throw, you know, throw out your phone.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  It's not, and I think those are like very trite things to say, and they're often born of an immense amount of privilege. Like, I realize that I have an immense amount of privilege being able to just not be online. Like, I literally think about this morning, actually was talking to my friend about this morning. My friend is a doctor, and she said to me, you know, Ramon, I wish I had the energy to go build a brand. Why does a medical professional need to build a brand? They do now, right? Medical professionals feel that they, because she is one of the dying breed of, you know, small business owners. She has her own practice, and she now has to think not just about taking care of patients, but about building an online brand, because that is what drives patients to your door, which is, by the way, I think ridiculous. I think that's

• 38:22Speaker 00

  a ridiculous state of affairs. So I was reflecting on like how I am privileged that I don't have to be chronically online and thinking about building a brand in order to feel like I can get ahead, right? So like, so what can, what can people do, which was, which is always a great question. I think number one is, one of the things about not being chronically online, even though I'm somewhat, somewhat like, like, I, I, I use social media as a way of understanding, like, social movements and how people are thinking about things. I use it as an observational tool. I think one of the things I've realized from not being like on Twitter all the time is that, is how much we get caught up in like local maxima and minima. And what I mean specifically is that like, there are attention cycles that are very short and seem incredibly consequential

• 39:05Speaker 00

  at the time, that you then realize really didn't matter. I know there's a lot of stories that I miss and a lot of like main characters online that I miss, but actually it doesn't impact my life. So I, I think one is just like, not being fooled by the moment, like the local, the local minima, and seeing the big picture. I will also add that, by the way, a lot of this very aggressive, do it now or, or else narratives about AI are actually meant to make you not plan long term, not like think deeply. It's meant to make you run around scared and not be strategic. So, you know, my advice in general, but also as a way to technology is like, think strategically about what will serve you.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Not and don't make fear based decisions. What do I mean by that? Like my, my, my intent of like using computer, for example, which is an agentic tool built by perplexity, was very intentional and I have been experimenting with it to think about what I want to use it for and not use it for. Versus the hype around open claw a few weeks ago, which was to me insane. That people were like, I'm gonna give it access to my bank accounts and it's gonna bet on Polly market for me. I'm like, uh, why don't you build something dumb? Like, as I said, a daily email with Kindle recommendations. Before you go giving your bank account information to it, right? So like, you need to figure out what your relationship with this technology will be.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  So yeah, I think that's my big advice is like, think strategically, think about how it serves you. Versus it being based on FOMO or fear, or I'm gonna lose my job or whatever else. Story that you, that is being pushed to make us too scared to ask questions.

• 40:51Geoff Nielson?

  I, I really like that and it, it ties into something that you said earlier, which, you know, I was a little bit surprised by, but you know, made me happy. Which is you said that there's, when you use some of these tools, there's, there's joy in it for you. Right? Like you're actually able to use these in a deliberate way and, and find joy. And so is that, is that basically your advice around this? Is, is the secret to finding joy in this stuff is being strategic, being intentional? And starting with how do I want to use this versus, you know, how am I expected to use this maybe?

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Yes, I, I think you framed it absolutely perfectly. It's, it's literally like how, how do, and this goes, just goes back to agency, right? And so much of what I've done over the past few years, and I would even argue maybe like this has been the arc of my career. It was the topic of my TED talk for sure, is how do we give people agency? Because with agency, we make choice. When we make choices, we're actually happier with the outcomes. I think part of this, like the satisfaction people feel, maybe even isn't how the tool is performing. But the fact that nobody bothered to ask us, nobody bothered to say, do you want this? You know, like I, I don't have kids, but I imagine parents trying to mediate technology and their children are irritated by the technology. Not necessarily. Clearly because they don't like technology, but because it was they were given no option.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  And now they have all this responsibility for something that they didn't choose to do. Um, and you know, and a good, you know, uh, that's a good way to think about it, right? It's not that people don't want responsibility. It's that we want to make a choice to have to have a responsibility, right? If you think of like, let's say a hobby that you have, like people who are, let's say like marathon runners. They will wake up at absolutely wild times and go run for thirteen miles. Why, but if I were to say, hey, you have to wake up for work at four thirty AM tomorrow, they would be irritated to do this. Why? Because they'd say, why? I did not make that choice. So part of the, to your point, part of me finding joy in using sort of more um, hands-on agentic tools is that I get to decide what it's being used for.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  I get to decide what problem it's solving. And by the way, I'm starting to see that arc with more of the tech tools that are being, I think before, they were trying to tell us what we wanted to use it for. And a great example, by the way, are calendaring apps or any sort of like AI assistant type apps that really don't do very well because they are so prescriptive. They make these broad assumptions of what you want. So I personally have never found one that works for me because I travel a lot. So if I had a Calendly, then like what happens is I end up with calls at two in the morning. Because unless I'm constantly going in and updating what times, which is a lot of work for me, then my, it's just not gonna work.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  So they have not thought through things like that, or at least not given someone like myself the tools to do that easily. So again, it's sort of this like generic prescribed use case being shoved on us. And that's what people are rejecting. And what does it look like to just like let go of some of the power? And maybe let us do stuff, like let us drive the car for a bit.

• 43:54Geoff Nielson?

  It's it's really interesting and I'm just I'm absorbing so much here and I'm thinking about it. And yeah, I'm trying to zoom out and think about what this cycle looks like. And the fact that we've got the backlash, we've got this big push by big tech and the phrase that came to mind, and I haven't thought about this before, but it's, you know, good branding is that it feels like there's a war on agency, like a war on human agency of like, no, you don't think about it. You let us think about it for you, which is in direct opposition with us feeling a sense of, you know, joy or pride or accomplishment.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 44:30Geoff Nielson?

  So if we if we agree that that's true, you know, how optimistic are you that this is getting better versus worse? Like, where is this going? Is do you think we're going to get an inflection point and it's going to be similar to what you said about groups on Twitter? And people are going to say, no, this is bullshit. I'm taking back my own agency and kind of forcing organizations to come with them? Or, you know, is it going to be the opposite? And we just as people go more toward that like Wally future of just, you know, turn off my brain? Or or secret options?

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I I think my answer that would like change at an hourly basis, depending on like what new what fresh nonsense I may have seen online or what's going on. Here's what I want to believe. And actually, I do believe like what like, and it's, I think I, again, back to these like constant battles I have in my own head, I constantly wonder if like me existing in this space is actually a bad thing of people like myself, right? Because, you know, people like me are not tech abolitionists, even if they use the language of tech abolitionism, right? Because to truly be a tech abolitionist, like, that means you're just literally disengaged from all of it. And often I do wonder, like,

• 45:51Speaker 00

  what would I do if I just literally just completely actually did throw my phone into the ocean? Like, that is a lifestyle change I've seriously considered, right? And I I wonder if the existence of people like myself is Futile, right? Because we're just, we're making it seem, we're giving window dressing when there's a fundamental problem, right? So the reason I still do this every day is actually, I do believe in the human condition and that the, that human beings want and need things like agency and ownership. And at some point we'll fight for it and we'll make it happen. Whether they're fighting for it with their dollars, whether they're fighting for it, you know, in Congress by trying to pass bills. You know, you see more and more young people running for office and running for office on specifically tech platforms.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Like it is very fascinating to me. I live in Texas, that we can have candidates in Texas that can run on issues of like data privacy. And the population, their constituency understands what it means. I think that's a great, I think that's a great thing. So I, I, I do believe it. And you know, the, the thing is the wheels of democracy move more slowly than the wheels of autocracy, right? So one example I use constantly actually is Elon Musk. And it's unfortunate that, you know, that man has actually failed at many, many things. Many of the things he has tried to do, much of the harm he has tried to inflict, he has actually failed that. And the problem is when he does it, he does it quickly. He fires half of Twitter illegally.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  He, you know, cops into the US government, hires a bunch of babies and they've wreak havoc and happens like overnight, very fast, right? But the wheels of democracy do turn because guess what? He lost the lawsuit against Twitter employees. He also lost the lawsuit against Tesla employees when they did something, something very, very similar. You know, Doge, a judge just ruled that many of the actions that Doge did were incorrect. And, you know, not actually permissible because they were never congressionally proved. The problem is that took two years to happen, right? The Twitter lawsuit took three years to happen. And the wheels of democracy move slowly. So maybe it is not in this like sort of social media driven, short attention span world. Back to like, let's think of the meta picture and the big picture strategy. If you're paying attention to the big picture,

• 47:58Speaker 00

  you'll see that like, a lot of these things are not particularly successful over time. In the immediate, they seem very successful. So yeah, I, I, I, I think that people, and I, I not even want, I need to believe. Right? I actually literally need to believe because that is what keeps me going at this job. I need to believe that people are going to do the right thing.

• 48:21Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and you know, your case for optimism is pretty compelling. And I like your, your point that it requires zooming out sometimes and it requires getting beyond, you know, the media cycle. And I mean, the media and their complicitness in this is a whole, is a whole other conversation. And I mean, like, you know, I should acknowledge again that like even us by having this conversation, we are part in some way of that landscape.

• 48:49Geoff Nielson?

  But, but it's a compelling case for optimism, that there's just the stories you don't hear. And, you know, what that means in terms of, you know, safeguards to, you know, what we want in our society.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And again, it's just like, I have not seen in the almost 10 years I've been at this job, people become smarter and demand more and demand better. You know, just again, anecdotally, one of the, this is before I even worked in responsible is field didn't even exist. I remember a while ago, like, Google had done this thing in Mountain View where they took these mosquitoes and they had synthesized something to help prevent, I want to say West Nile virus. And they just sort of released these mosquitoes after just injecting them with thing. And at the time, this was like in like peak tech optimism. Everyone's like, wow, Google, amazing.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  And I'm like, did this get FDA approval? You know, and like just like thinking through like, but again, the predominant narrative was just so optimistic, like, oh my God, Google, they're going to cure West Nile virus by stopping the mosquitoes. I don't think that narrative would fly today. Right? You know, I think today people would be like, excuse me, why is Google like doing biological experiments on people? You know, you, you could not ask those questions 10 years ago that you can, you know, like, well, more than, sorry, I'm dating myself, more than 10 years ago, that, that you can ask that. I love that. I'm, I am always happy to see like citizen movements. There is this.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  Article by Rebecca Solnit that I absolutely love and is actually one of I was probably one of her least known articles and I love her reading Rebecca Solnit because she straddles that kind of critique and optimism that I think we need. And this this article is called When the Hero is the Problem and the purpose of the article is to talk about how we really want to show this like individual hero and all of Silicon Valley is built on this, the child genius who dropped out of Harvard and single-handedly builds whatever, right? And what she points out is actually the reality is that most, most progressive movements, most positive for humanity movements were built by collectives. And what she reflects on is how hard it is for her to pitch a story or write a book because we as society are so

• 51:09Speaker 00

  enamored of the hero. But she's like, you know, there, there is no one person that solves a problem. Collectives solve problems. And I like to think about that when I like to think about what does it look like to push back against centralization of power? It is a collective movement. So we're not going to have a hero. We're not going to have a single person. What we'll have is a lot of people just getting really fed up and just stopping. And maybe they'll stop in their own little way, but like that will mean something when it's all summed up and all put together.

• 51:41Geoff Nielson?

  So I'm going to ask you a question that might be unfair. And so feel free to answer it as you see fit. But in in this landscape of AI and consolidation of power and big tech and, you know, collective movements and responses to this stuff, what, what is the role of the AI ethicist or of responsible AI? Where do you see yourself and your mission into fitting in this broader picture? And how much of it is it, you know, with consumers or organizations? And, you know, how do you, how do you, you know, roll that boulder uphill? Or, you know, something slightly more positive to make sure that, you know, we're contributing for good here?

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's an unfair question. I think it's a great question. I think there's sort of two questions in your question. One is like, what is the AI ethicist role? And then the second one was like, like, what am I like, what is my, what do I see as my role? I think those are two. I think about the second one constantly. What is the AI ethicist role? I think what I like is that, you know, people have fallen into different categories, right? I think there are the people and a lot of people fall in the space where it's about like informing people, right? I do think there is still a role of constantly informing. I think informing can be a double edged sword. I think, you know, based like critique without any path forward

• 52:59Speaker 00

  is actually alienating and disempowering. And I think there are people in the responsible AI community that I wish would learn that.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  You know, I'm trying to be like very careful with my words here, but you know, I, I, I think there is a like, yes, we should be raising awareness, but like people cannot walk away feeling hopeless, right? And I think there are people who do that amazingly well. Karen Howe, it just comes to mind immediately, right? Like she, she see, and she as a journalist comes in as somebody who is good at telling a story, explaining things. That's why Empire of AI is so powerful. But what's great is you don't leave that book feeling disempowered, right? She focuses on positive movement. So there's the, that's a good example of awareness raising.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Second is there are kind of the builders. I put myself in kind of the builders category. It's, you know, and builders, by the way, are not just tech people. There's a lot of lawyers who are builders. One thing I love is seeing like this legal community popping up. And then, you know, if I could, you know, go back in time, one degree, maybe I would think of getting would be a law degree because I think tech law is one of the most fascinating places to be. And there's so much ground to cover with like rights and protections and to be informed and capable in this space is one of the most powerful tools you can have. So I love seeing privacy professionals, like legal tech people popping up to say like, these are your rights or they're going to advocate for rights. You know, the third group of people within the builders are, you know, auditors and people who are making tools, right?

• 54:27Speaker 00

  And that is also very, very Powerful space to be in. So what I so now we're on the like, what do you, Ramon, see yourself doing? So one of the purposes of human intelligence, the nonprofit, was to build a community of practice of independent evaluators. And one of the things that the problem that I want to tackle, that I've been tackling for the past few years is, you know, how do we get, again, back to agency, how do we get, you know, people who are lived experience experts or experts that are not, in, you know, influenced by tech companies, i.e. literally paid for, on, you know, on a tech company's dollar to do this work, and not just interested in this work, like legally protected, you know, certified, that it's a viable, it needs to be a profession.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Professions don't fall out of the sky. They they happen because there are certain things that enable it. So what I'm working on now with the Public Benefit Corporation of Human Intelligence is the infrastructure to do that work. How does somebody, let's say, you know, you're interested in being an evaluator, maybe you even have some consulting work, how do you do this work efficiently? How do you do it well? So I see it as like, problems to tackle. The other part I'll add is, you know, there's so much like symbiosis between all of these people, right? So the tech legal people know that they're not technologists, and then they'll go to people like me to say, hey, if we're trying to write a law that says your model should be audited,

• 55:51Speaker 00

  what can, what can we and can we not ask for companies to give and do it, so it's like, we're all calibrating. So I think there's, there's, it's just such a deep, and I have not even tackled like cybersecurity, right? Which also is intersecting with the space immensely, which I would argue is probably one of the most lucrative and future-proof fields to go into. The other part I'll add, by the way, with all the, all of the hysteria and concern at the moment about the future of work, I see all of these jobs ranging from cybersecurity all the way to like informing people about it, as these are like AI-proof jobs, like AI cannot come to do this work because it fundamentally needs human judgment.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  It needs collaboration, it needs synthesis, it needs historical understanding, it needs so much stuff that AI literally cannot, cannot do.

• 56:41Geoff Nielson?

  We've sort of backed, there's so many threads I want to pull on there. So thank you, Ramon, for that comprehensive answer. But we kind of backed into future of work there. You know, cybersecurity is kind of interesting in some ways. You know, I work with a lot of IT professionals and some aspects of cybersecurity are actually the first to be automated because you're doing, you know, kind of automated threat detection, which is very different from the judgment piece about designing cybersecurity work. But maybe, again, just more broadly, you know, can you give me any sort of, you know, from your perspective, just view on the future of work and what it's going to look like over the next handful of years as some of these, you know, AI-powered tools kind of,

• 57:25Geoff Nielson?

  I was going to say infiltrate more workplaces, maybe that's too judgmental a word, but as we start to, you know, rewire organizations with AI.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I actually just did this, the show called Open to Debate on this topic specifically. So something I actually have been thinking a lot about, and it sparked me to think more about even just the idea of human intelligence and what does it mean to be an intelligent person? I find it fascinating from like a philosophical perspective and a practical perspective. So there's like, just to go into the practical, one, like so much of this is the hype cycle at play and the hype cycle is meant to be disempowering, right? Again, you know, hopping in and saying all jobs will be automated in the next 18 months is such a ridiculous and unfounded thing to say. And like, but then why, right?

• 58:15Speaker 00

  Because it, you cannot, you cannot adjust your life to something that is going to completely decimate. It's as if like, you know, somebody pointed out that there is a meteor about to hit the planet Earth in the next day and we're all going to die. Like, there's nothing for you to do, right? There's nothing, you cannot plan and execute on a timeframe that is that short, right? But instead, but that's not the reality. The reality that we are seeing that, and again, like this is why this like getting caught up in the local maxima or minima is dangerous, is if you're caught up in that story, then you're missing the real story, which is actually that, you know, We are experiencing a lost generation of young people who cannot get jobs. Entry level jobs are increasingly harder to get, especially in fields like programming.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  Right? So what? So but that annoyingly is a problem that you can actually tackle. Right? If you have like narrowed your scope to people graduating with certain kinds of degrees who are trying to enter the job market, that is something maybe we can build something around. But if we are then all going bananas because we think none of us will have a job. People are going into self-preservation mode. Why would somebody as a senior engineer try to build, you know, opportunities for young people entering the job market? If you as a senior engineer are being told that you're going to be out of a job. Right? So it is, this is like a perfect example of how it's disempowering. So like, one, I do not think jobs will all disappear. But two, I think that there are certain fields that are being automated away right now.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  I think it is happening slowly but surely. And I think that three, because this timeframe is not like happening tomorrow, we can actually plan for it. Again, if we like, take a look at the long-term picture, we actually can plan for the next three to five years on, you know, how are the kids who are sophomores in college today going to be able to be successful in the job market? Right? That is a different question from saying, how can a kid who's graduating this year be successful in the job market? And again, these are actually problems we can tackle. Right? So one thing, you know, I love is that the CEO of Reddit has said, actually, we're leaning into hiring young people. Because, you know, we think we can figure out roles for them. Amazing. But the fact that he even pointed out

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  and is thinking of the problem to be solved as young people needing jobs. Right? That's a framing that not everybody understands right now. The other thing I'll add is there's also increasing empirical evidence, which I'm glad to see on how work is being integrated and how it's successful and not successful. There's so many papers coming out. Eric Benjolson has had quite a few. There's like others that have come out of like Harvard and MIT. And like generally, the trend that we're kind of seeing is that. You still need expertise. And maybe if there's another theme other than agency, this whole conversation that I'd like to bring up, it's discernment. I think that, you know, having the ability to discern good and bad output, appropriate and inappropriate uses of technology

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  actually requires expertise. So it's almost like counterfactual, right? Where, or not counterfactual, yeah, it is counterfactual, right? Where like the existence of this technology actually means you need more experts, but it's automating away the junior level roles that would then allow someone to become an expert. Which, by the way, a lot of senior engineering people are saying, they're like, well, you need to hire junior people, even if an AI can do their job, because I'm not going to be here forever. And this AI tool is not as great as you think it is. And you need my level of discernment to understand what is good and bad and what is right and wrong. So that, that, I would apply that to social media. I would apply that to our consumption of these tools. I think, other than agency, my other word, big word of the day is discernment.

• 1:01:52Geoff Nielson?

  I, I really like that word too. And I like the, kind of the framing of why it's useful and why, you know, being an expert is, you know, in, in some ways has more, more value than what's, you know, obvious or being communicated in some of these headlines. I want to come back to something, you know, one of the themes here about by framing these tackle, these, uh, by framing these problems better, we can, we can actually tackle them. We can come up with a plan, we can do something about it. I want to push on the word we. Who, who do you see as being kind of the key actors in the we? Is it, you know, is it business leaders? Is it political? Is it just us as everyday consumers?

• 1:02:35Geoff Nielson?

  Who, who holds the power here? And, you know, do you have any specific advice to the people who you think have the most outsized roles in, in, you know, correcting some of this?

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great question. And we was sort of used very broadly, but you're absolutely correct to say, well, who is we in different situations? I think who like it depends on what we are talking about, right? So there is a we that is the average consumer when it comes to like picking and choosing whether or not you want to download an app or, you know, buy the new Alexa or, you know, enable Siri on your iPhone. Like, there is a we that is the average consumer. And I'm talking about actually all the things that I don't do. I've never bought an Alexa, don't plan on buying it. Siri is turned off on my iPhone. Like, this actually, as a consumer, I did it on my parents' phone. You know, like, I can do that. These are, these are right. These are capabilities you have as a person. Then there is this we that is like the technologist or the person in the room,

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  building the product or the tool. You know, that is a very different we. And like, as that individual, you have a lot more agency and ownership of what's being built, how it's being used. And again, like how the problem's being defined. And then the third is like, there is a role for political. It's actually, I think a lot of this like question framing frankly does lie in, you know, in the hands of policymakers, not just Congress, but also like state and local policymakers. You know, whoever, like whoever is like, for example, the, the state, like the state lead for the Department of Education deciding on how AI should be. It could be a school board, right? There are these political decision makers that are, you know, a framing questions.

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  When I say framing questions, this could even be what I said earlier. Like, we want to write a bill on auditing algorithms. What should that bill be? And just as an example, the current New York State law on hiring, on requirements for hiring algorithms is so weak that a kid with an Excel tool could like pass it, right? So back when that law first came out, everybody was excited about the idea of it, but it got so watered down that actually it just became legal theater. And actually, worse, it created more responsibility for an individual to have to push back and say, actually, this algorithm did discriminate against me, even though it technically quote unquote passed, you know, passed the rules of this law. When I had been asked

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Afterwards to help companies audit these algorithms, I would literally turn it down and say, you don't need me. You literally need an Excel sheet and a bunch of data from your database and you can you can pass this, right? So framing the question, I think, is one of the most important tools for policymakers to do. They need to frame the right question the right way and then be able to frame the answer. Because bad policy in many cases is actually like the example I gave is worse than having no policy at all. Because a bad policy then dumps the responsibility on us as the consumer. So whereas before, let's say if you were in New York State and you thought you were being discriminated against by an algorithm. You know, there's a particular kind of like, you know, onus you have of like having a court case and hiring a lawyer.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  Well, now your lawyer has another job, which is to say that the law itself did not adequately protect you, which is much, much harder to fight against than just saying a discriminatory algorithm being used by a company.

• 1:05:53Geoff Nielson?

  Right. And as I think about that too, thematically, it seems to be tying back to that piece about discernment, right? And being able to frame these things correctly and understand it. And so I'm curious. You know, you talked about the importance of framing, but are there any, you know, specific guiding principles you can share about how to best do that? When we're talking about, you know, confronting this technology and its usage.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Geoff Nielson?

  And the lens we haven't gone to yet, by the way, that's on my mind is also with with business leaders. How they should be adopting it, how they should be thinking about it. And so, you know, what kind of guiding principles do you have for them or for any of the other kind of key actors in this in this space?

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, for business leaders. It's actually always been kind of the same boring advice. It's just like, does this technology actually solve a problem for you? Like a business need versus just being kind of a cool, like demonstrably so. So it's not like, yes, I would love to get rid of all of my employees because benefits are expensive. Therefore, I'll introduce AI agents. Like, is an agent better than a person? By the way, every CEO that was out there, like CEO of Klarna, Salesforce, all. About how many people are in, they all have rolled their ass. Every single, not a single one has met the expectations that they were yelling about when agents were first coming out.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  My engineering lead just sent me an article today that actually MCP servers are being quiet, was like a little bit in the weeds, but like MCP server, MCP servers are supposed to be like the next big thing in agentic infrastructure. Everybody was told, gotta learn MCPs, like you gotta understand it, otherwise you're going to be left behind. Funny how, and it actually comes from perplexity computer. It's actually just built on REST APIs, like it's, it's very simply built. You did not need this. So like, just to point out a couple of things, you know, at a, let's say a business leader level. Agenda K is going to take care of my workforce. Well, it doesn't, it's not demonstrably proven it can do that. So before you're jumping into it. Is it solving an actual problem? Is it capable of solving the problem?

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  Does it solve that problem better than something analog, right? So the MCP example is actually, it didn't solve a problem better than something analog and actually probably introduced a whole raft of new problems. Cause as I was talking to people about it, they're like, how do you handle versioning with an MCP server, right? If an MCP server is meant to like orchestrate a whole bunch of tools. What happens if like one, one, like, you know, there's one tool in this chain that now has like some specific thing that's changed about it and then everything is a cascading failure, right? Like it's less observable than your very traditional like REST APIs, talking to your product and building a thing. Anyway, so like, uh, uh, those are, those are kind of my, it is a very boring answer, but it is like actually the thing people don't do.

• 1:08:46Geoff Nielson?

  No, I, I appreciate that. And the, and the, and the fact that people aren't doing it makes it that much more important, right? Like if it's, yeah.

• 1:08:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I think that again, like just sort of for the general, I think people, people now increasingly understand, right? How much of the stuff is smoke and mirrors? But I think there was a belief that the, there are so many words that are thrown around that are actually Silicon Valley business jargon that to the average person sounds like something real and tangible that's just like made up math. So like Valuation is a great example, like value. Oh my God, that company is worth a billion dollars. It's not like the average person thinks in of this like money in money out sense. So like, wow, if my local bakery were worth a billion dollars, that means it's selling a billion dollars of cookies. That is not what that means in Silicon Valley. It means that like, it's like the price of art.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  You know, this painting is only worth a million dollars because someone's willing to pay a million dollars. So it's intrinsically worth that much. I think people are starting to realize this when they're saying that some company has this valuation of a map or this technology is capable of something. It doesn't actually mean it can do the thing or it's worth that much. It's a speculative discussion. There's a lot of, a lot of like speculation being sold, which, you know, morbidly, like one of my latest morbid interests is just like following the rise of poly market and sort of this legalized social gambling that's happening. In this, it's kind of like a sick symptom of this like very speculative hype driven world that like, it's like, it's like the,

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  it's like an Ouroboros, it's like this hype is eating itself, you know? And I see poly market as like that or Kalshiak, I'm not going to like discriminate it. They're both awful. They're both this manifestation of like the snake eating itself.

• 1:10:34Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like meta hype in some way. It's like the hype of the hype. Can we bet on the hype? Like it's just.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  Correct. It's, yeah, it's, it's like when we all looked at NFTs and laughed. You know, this is just like NFT as an entire completely gazillion dollar industry that is being integrated into every aspect of our lives. This NFT is like, we're stuck in a corner and the true believers got to go do what they wanted to do. Which by the way, you know, the metaverse recently shut down. A billion dollars, a billion with a B. I don't think all of AI governance has spent a billion dollars.

• 1:11:12Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  In like its existence.

• 1:11:15Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, well, and, and like, who saw that coming? Like everyone, I think, who was paying attention.

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  Everybody, you know?

• 1:11:21Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:11:23Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. So I, so I want to be conscious at the time here as well. And I know, um, I know, Ramon, we've covered an awful lot of ground here. Any kind of final thoughts you want to leave listeners with before we wrap up?

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just want to go back to kind of these two themes that have clearly come up in this conversation. One is agency and two is discernment. And I think that applies to like actually every aspect of our lives because every aspect of our lives currently is digitally mediated. You know, it is, it is now our responsibility as a consumer to exercise those things, right? Figure out, you know, what I do and don't have agency over and execute that agency and learn about how you can execute your agency. And two is like learn discernment, like what is good, what is bad, what is positive, what is negative. And again, like what I have seen very positively of the last 10 years in this field is that people have become more discerning about certain things. And then the agency part is the ability to execute on that discernment.

• 1:12:17Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. And that's exciting that it feels like there's some green shoots of more discernment and people, you know, kind of fighting back against, you know, the, the powers that be here.

• 1:12:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. Like I said, just like as a cultural observer of social media, some of my favorite accounts are just like regular people. There's one that's actually now become copied by multiple different accounts. And it's, you know, this guy, and he looks a particular way. And he's like quoting, quoting one crazy thing a tech CEO said every day in 2026, actually three or four similar accounts. And every day it's like some fresh nonsense. But I love that it's just like some influencer meme talking to regular people. It's again, it's not me, it's not an expert. It's just like, it's literally an influencer meme. And I love that. I love that that exists because that that's what changes the collective psyche.

• 1:13:09Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and can I, I just had a brainwave while you were talking, and I feel like it ties back into something you said a lot earlier. It feels like snark is actually a very powerful weapon against, you know, the, the manipulators of power and, and the eritters of our agency.

• 1:13:28Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, like, it's hard to tell. I was born in 1980. So I'm like a millennial Gen X person. We like live and die by snark. Like 100%. There is no better way to disarm somebody with a very fragile ego than to be snarky.

• 1:13:46Geoff Nielson?

  I love that. I love that. In defense of snark. That's awesome. Ramon, I wanted to say such a big thank you for coming on. This has been such an interesting conversation. I know you've given me a ton to think about. So I really appreciated all your insights.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you.

• 1:14:03Geoff Nielson?

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