Jen Goldbeck: I've never played with such a big set of blocks before. Oh. Oh, I love this question. Oh, that is a hard question.

System: This is tense. This is tense. I think you got to go for it.

Jen Goldbeck: Oh, I'm going to cry answering this question. Hi, I'm Jen Goldbeck. I am a computer scientist and an AI ethicist and I think people need to hold power for democracy to work.

Shaolin Gintaya: My name is Shaolin Gintaya. I'm um a documentary filmmaker and a TED fellow and I make films about how technology impacts our humanity. Today we're playing idea knockdown. Red blocks are rapid fire questions and black blocks have questions that go a little deeper. Whoever knocks down the tower will have to do a mystery challenge.

Jen Goldbeck: Have you ever felt manipulated by an algorithm? Wholeheartedly? Yes.

Shaolin Gintaya: All the time.

Jen Goldbeck: All the time.

Shaolin Gintaya: And like I actually hate it more when it's right cuz I'm like I do like that thing. Stop spying on me.

Jen Goldbeck: I have a pair of yellow shoes that I didn't need and they just followed me everywhere I went.

Shaolin Gintaya: So bad. I'll try this. Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Don't get cocky.

Jen Goldbeck: What is one thing AI should never decide?

Shaolin Gintaya: There's like infinity things that AI should never decide. Um, it should never make judgments that can have a negative impact on people, I think. So, if if we're approving people for mortgages, like AI can approve them, maybe, but it should never say no, right? AI should never make a decision that like takes an opportunity away from a person. This is... Oh, that's good.

Jen Goldbeck: Should your personal data be treated like your property at a minimum? Yes,

Shaolin Gintaya: 100%.

Jen Goldbeck: Our thoughts, our memories, the things that we share on the internet, they they should belong to us. I think this is like the the core like legal problem with the whole AI ecosystem right now is that like we share something with a third party at least in the US right and then they can do whatever they want with it and that's where like so much of the dystopia of like AI and the online ecosystem has flowed from because we don't have a right to control that we should.

Shaolin Gintaya: What is one thing that everyday people can do to push back against big tech?

Jen Goldbeck: That is a hard question. There's like a scam in all of this that they're trading convenience to us in exchange for like all this stuff of value. The more steps you take to preserve your privacy, the less convenient your life becomes, right? You stop agreeing to things. You reject the cookies. You put the tracker blockers in. And then you're not going to be able to order pizza in that browser. But like you'll be fine.

Shaolin Gintaya: And I would just add on to that convenience for whom? Efficiency for whom? Because now I go to the grocery store, I have to check out my own cart. You get on the phone, you can't even get a human on the phone for days. There's no accountability. And so I don't know if it's convenience for me or if it's efficiency for big tech companies that make the world less human for me.

Jen Goldbeck: 100%.

Shaolin Gintaya: It's really. I feel like I got the last slidy one.

Jen Goldbeck: This is the last easy one. This is just the gambling.

Shaolin Gintaya: Oh, you got one.

Jen Goldbeck: Oh my goodness. I've never played with such a big set of blocks before. All right.

Shaolin Gintaya: Okay. Is it actually possible to use the internet without sacrificing your privacy?

Jen Goldbeck: Oh, I love this question. I think we've been sold a bag of tricks. And I actually think there's a lot of different ways that the that the internet could be truly democratic in terms of at least putting laws about what kind of data can be collected about us. Having the right to be forgotten like we do in Europe, having some rights to what data is collected about us and how it can be bought and sold and to whom. And I think what we really need is policy makers who understand that data rights interacts with every civil right and freedom that we enjoy as free people living in a democracy and that we have to protect a free and open internet. And that means the right to not be massively surveiled on the internet. Oh. Oh no. How about that? Do I have to put it over here? Okay. What is one thing you would do right now to change the internet for the better? Simple little question.

Shaolin Gintaya: Um, I would make the entire surveillance tech ecosystem illegal, but like I just turn it all off. Like we can have social media. You can like post your stuff. Nobody's allowed to collect that data or do anything. It can sit there. Nobody can use it for anything other than to to like look at it. companies are able to work and make a ton of money not doing mass surveillance and there's like a version of the internet that could exist like that.

Jen Goldbeck: It's my real hope that we will do more to protect the most vulnerable among us, children um on the internet. We're basically unleashing the most powerful predictive persuasive algorithms in the history of the world on brains that aren't fully developed yet. Yeah, there's been these like exponential rises in anxiety, depression. Um, you know, young women and girls have fallen off a cliff almost with the rise of social media. When these lawsuits go forward and we get discovery from tech companies, they know that these are problems and then they're doing it anyway. This is like a democracy issue, right? Like these companies have the same power as governments. if they're exercising that power over us. Like as a democracy, we should be able to understand what's going on inside as opposed to just a black box that we have to leave alone. God, what is democracy? I would argue that a democracy is governance by the people and not being governed by invisible systems of knowledge and power that we can't question or can't see. Yeah, I agree.

System: No, this is tense. This is tense. You got to go for it. This is tense. Well done.

Shaolin Gintaya: Okay.

System: Congrats, Shaolin. Jen, it's time for your mystery challenge. A bonus question Shaolin wrote before we began filming.

Jen Goldbeck: Thank you. In a world where machines may have assumed the sum total of human knowledge, what are the qualities that make us uniquely human and would allow us to govern these technologies? Oh, I'm going to cry answering this question. Like, we're almost there, right? Computers have almost all of everything and they don't get to feel. They're not embodied, right? They don't experience loss or grief or love or happiness. They don't know what it feels like to be tired. And like all of that is like actually our human experience. We can write about it. We can I can describe to you what it feels like. But if I tell you I climbed a mountain and I stood on the summit and I watched the sunset, you can never have done that and know what that experience was like. computer can never understand that, right? So even with the entirety of human knowledge, they have no capacity to do anything except like a cheap imitation of the actual human experience. There's places we see them helping with science that they're they're helping to streamline things. That's great, right? But in terms of like replicating our humanity, like I think it's it's so misguided because our humanity is everything outside of what they're able to have.

Shaolin Gintaya: You know, artificial intelligence, it's called intelligence.

Jen Goldbeck: Yeah.

Shaolin Gintaya: But it lacks morals, ethics, compassion, empathy. And so these systems really need us to bring our hearts into the room. And I also think that we need more patience and to extend more grace to one another. We're losing our ability for civic dialogue, to disagree respectfully, to honor the inherent value of every human being.

Jen Goldbeck: And I think that once we understand that to be human is to be imperfect, to be imperfect is to be human, that we realize that we have to extend each other a lot more grace, a little patience with the messy, awkward art of connection. Absolutely.

Shaolin Gintaya: Thanks. Thank you. This was so fun.