but-it-happened.txt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlQ7EoJDTQY

Hello, internet. I am making one of those videos where you sit in a chair and
directly address the camera about a serious subject. I know it's not in my
wheelhouse, and there are people who do this way better. And in fact, that's the
reason I'm making this video is that something happened last week that I really
wanted to see people make this kind of video about, and nobody did. So, I'm
hoping that I can generate some attention for it and some interest in this topic
so that people will cover it.

Specifically, there was these clips that were sent around last week. It was Eric
Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, giving a commencement speech at the University of
Arizona. And this did get some coverage the second half of the speech. He says
some things about AI that are clearly supposed to be like positive, uplifting,
like applause lines or that kind of thing, but actually he just gets booed the
entire time. uh and the students clearly don't like what he's saying. This was
part of a trend of commencement speakers mentioning AI and getting booed. And
that was kind of the end of the news story about this.

But in the first half of that commencement speech, which I went and watched the
whole thing, he actually says a bunch of things that I think are really
important for us to look at. They're in a way very troubling, I think. At least
they were to me. And so I'd really like people to talk about it and I'd like to
hear what people have to say to see if they think the same thing as I do.

So here is a clip from that first half. Give it a look.

    We believed that connecting every human being on Earth to each other. And I
    really believe this and all of the world's information would be an unambiguous
    good. We believe that it would democratize knowledge, lift people out of
    poverty, and make us wiser and kinder and more curious about each other. In a
    sense, we thought that we were adding stones to a cathedral of knowledge that
    humanity had been constructing for centuries. But the world we built turned out
    to be more complicated than we had anticipated. The same tools that connect us
    also isolate us. The same platforms that gave everyone a voice like you're using
    now also degraded the public square. They rewarded outrage. They amplified our
    worst instincts. They coarssened the way we speak to each other. in that way and
    in the way that we treat each other is in the in the essence of a society. In
    the years that after I graduated, no one sat down and resolved to build a
    technology that would polarize democracies and unsettle a generation of young
    people. That was not our plan, but it happened.

So, the thing that struck me about this was that Eric Schmidt is basically
talking about all of the positive possibilities of the internet, like connecting
all the people together and providing them access to the world's information,
all these really good things. He's talking about all of that in like an active
way. He's saying like that's what we set out to build. And I guess by
implication kind of that is what we built, right?

And the weird part is then he acknowledges all of these very bad things that
happened like the fraying of democracy, uh the degrading of the public square,
the alienation of youth, like all of these very bad things that we all kind of
now acknowledge have happened in the last 10 to 20 years. And somehow all of a
sudden the tone becomes completely passive. He doesn't say, "We built this stuff
and then it turned out to do these really bad things. That was our fault." Or,
"What a horrible mistake we made." Or, "Here's how we failed." Right? It's just
completely passive. He says all these bad things. We didn't set out to do it,
but it happened. Completely passive. It happened. That's it.

And you know, I can kind of see that there are people in computing history who
could say things like that. I mean, if Steve Waznjak wants to complain about
what Apple Computer is doing in terms of maybe closed ecosystems or something
like that, and he goes on a podcast and he says, "You know, when I was building
those first Apple computers in my garage, I never intended for anyone to turn it
into a company that was going to restrict your access to computing or control
what you did on your device." I mean, it would sound so genuine. It's so true.
It's it is what happened and you could understand his perspective. You know
exactly what he's feeling and what he's saying there and it's not his fault. I
would never consider those things to be his fault. Right?

But Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google and in other executive roles there from like
2001 to like 2017, the very period when like the dark patterns of internet
business were developed and entrenched in how the industry worked. led by his
company like Google the place that made advertising and data collection and
manipulating what people did and all this sort of AB testing everything that
whole thing was like their science that's what they were building literally that
thing for him to come out and and like cosplay as Steve Waznjak right basically
he's he's sort of like Tim Robinson in the hot dog outfit looking around going,
I'm still trying to find the guy who did this, right? To have him say that, it
just it doesn't make any sense.

But then when I thought about it, I was like, "Oh, I guess it does make some
sense." Because if you were there and you were one of the primary decision
makers who'd said, "We're going to do the business model this way and kept
following the money down every dark path that it implied for the technological
landscape. Unless you want to sort of accept that you are the villain, you have
to have some kind of a mental process for excusing yourself from the results,
right? You have to have some way of isolating.

And I guess this is how in Eric Schmidt's mind, he didn't build the dark part of
the internet. It just kind of happened as an outgrowth of what was otherwise a
noble pursuit of a strictly good thing. And you can see him say this very
specifically. He even describes it as the same tool. The same tool that is used
for positive X is used for negative Y is the mental framework he used and what
he said in the speech.

So to him it's as if he only presided over the construction of the tool part. He
only was responsible for Google the search engine. He wasn't responsible for
Google the advertising company, Google the data collection company, Google the
behavioral modification, AB testing, whatever you want to call all of that dark
pattern layer. Somehow he just built a search engine and wow, look at all the
crazy terrible things that started to happen downwind of that. It's just really
strange, but I guess it makes a lot of sense.

And with that in mind, right, like if you take that perspective, the part of the
speech, the second part of the speech where the students were booing much more
actively and that were they were booing about AI specifically, it now takes on a
very different tone really. Uh go take a look at like a clip from it now just
because, you know, just to refresh your memory of what was in there. You
probably already saw it, but here's an example from the second half of that
lecture and the kinds of things that Eric Schmidt was saying.

    My hope is that you will choose to engage anyway, that you'll choose to be in
    the room where these decisions take place and to have a voice in how they're
    made. When you are in that room, bring something with you. Bring the values that
    make us human in the first place. The technology on its own is just a tool. It
    will optimize for what we tell it to optimize for. But somebody has to decide.
    And in your lifetime, that somebody is going to be you. So choose freedom.
    Choose open debates and the slow, often messy, but beautiful project of learning
    to live alongside people with whom you disagree. Choose equality. Choose a
    diversity of perspectives, including, let me add, and if you if you'd let me
    make this point, please.

So, when you combined the first and second halves of this commencement speech,
hopefully you can now see why I really want people to talk more about this
because it's not just a case of somebody getting up and saying some AI
punchlines and they get booed because people hate AI. I think there's something
much more twisted going on here.

This is a case where someone who had direct decision-making authority during the
time period when the very worst most dystopian parts of the technology business
model were developed, perfected and entrenched.

And he is giving this commencement speech to a group of students who have known
nothing but that their whole lives. They're not like me. They didn't know a time
before all of this. They didn't experience technology in the 80s or something
like this. So all they know is the dark pattern version. All they know is the
one where they don't own anything and their data is kept by other people and
their behavior is tracked and their data is sold and they are targeted for
advertising. That's what they know about technology. That's what technology is
like for them and only that.

And Eric Schmidt, one of the primary architects, is now looking them in the eye
with a straight face and saying, "You should be enthusiastic about the next new
wave of technology. You should want to be in the room and make decisions about
how that new technology will go. And you should bring your humanity with you and
your good judgment about how we can do things in a way that will benefit all of
us and be good for all of us.

Well, yeah, but why didn't Eric Schmidt do any of that? He just said in the
first part of the commencement speech that there were all these really bad
things that happened on his watch and he was in the rooms the entire time. He
was in one of the most important rooms where these decisions were being made and
he either didn't or didn't want to or couldn't stop any of that from happening.
So if he wanted to pass on something valuable to these students, well that would
have been the thing. It would have been the introspection of what went wrong.
Why did he fail? Why did he say okay to building this very bad aspect of
technology on top of the useful tool? The parts that we all think are actually
good. Why didn't he stop that top part? Why doesn't he take some responsibility
for it?

Why doesn't he see that the thing that people are afraid of with artificial
intelligence is not just technology in the abstract. It's that they saw what
Eric Schmidt and his cohort of Silicon Valley decision makers did the last time
they were given a new technology to guide. They saw them build the dark pattern
version of it. They lived it and now they are terrified that they're going to do
the same dark pattern thing on top of the next new technology that AI will go
exactly the same way.

And what do you have to show them to try to convince them that you're not going
to do that? Do you show up with an apology for what happened? Do you show up
with an acknowledgment of your culpability there? Do you show up with any advice
about how to avoid it? Nothing. Just the passive voice. But it happened. That's
it.

So, I really hope that people who are better at making this kind of video than I
am will dig into this more and make a bigger deal out of it because it can't be
right that this is the kind of thing that is being said by the people who were
responsible for the newly dystopian aspects of technology. It didn't just happen
because the tool was let loose on the public and it just happened. People built
the bad parts of it. They did that. And we have to have some acknowledgementgg
about that and some introspection because if we don't want it to go the same way
again with artificial intelligence as it did with the internet, we'd better
figure out both why it happened and how to convince the next Eric Schmidtz of
the world and the current Eric Schmidt for that matter because he still has
influence in Silicon Valley and Washington DC that their decisions led to this
and we need to do better next time.