EVERY SPOKEN WORD
75 min read · 15,450 words- 0:00 – 0:58
The Trial That Changed Everything
- SPSpeaker
The verdict is in. That landmark social media addiction trial, Meta and YouTube found liable for a product that harms the very children who use it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Big tech, your gig is over.
- SPSpeaker
They do it by design. They're trying to keep us all scrolling. It's bad for us. It's really bad for kids.
- TNTrevor Noah
I'll tell you this, if the jury had returned a no, the champagne corks would be popping in the boardrooms of Google and Meta.
- TNTrevor Noah
And for parents, we now know that they were manipulating our children for profits. Every kid with a cellphone that ... With any device with a camera and connection to the internet is in danger. [upbeat music]
- TNTrevor Noah
This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. [upbeat music]
- 0:58 – 2:12
The Name With a Secret Origin
- SPSpeaker
How do I pronounce your name, by the way? Uh, Dex and then Hunter-Torricke. Oh, Torricke. Yeah. Okay. So the E, no, it's not a- Yeah, yeah. Okay. Where's the last name from? Scottish, weirdly enough. Scottish? Yeah, so my, my dad's side of the family went to India in, like, the 19th century. They were Scottish, and they were part of the East India Company. So they were, like, the working class Scots who made up, like, a huge part of the East India Company, and then that's how the British Empire went and conquered places. So I think they were, like, merchants or, like, soldiers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It's, like, such a hazy bit of history. And then there was, of course, just this one, like, very elderly aunt, you know, in her 90s who, like, told me, like, the family history. She was the only person who'd, like, mapped this thing out. Yeah. She was the only one who knew. Yeah. Yeah. The Dutch East India Trading Company. Yeah. What a story, man. Yeah. What a w- It, it, it's funny, it's ... Sometimes it feels like we're living through new times all the time, and then you, you read, like, a history book, or you read, like, you know, an old story that's being told about something, and you go, "Huh." Feels like everything is the same just with the technology of the day. And a different cast of characters, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, just this revolving
- 2:12 – 4:29
Tech Giants and the Dutch East India Company
- SPSpeaker
door of people. Yeah, because, because when I, when I think about, like, a lot of the work that you're doing now, uh, and the conversations you're having, I go, some of the conversations we have about tech feel very similar to the Dutch East India Trading Company. Yeah. You know? We're talking about an organization that got so big- Mm-hmm ... it had the power to shift governments. Yeah, had its own armies. And ar- Yeah, it had its own armies. It, it, it changed how people lived their lives. It started living ... It, it sort of was lawless. Yeah. Had shareholders. Yep. Right? I think it was the first publicly traded company ever. Yeah. And because of that, it just shaped the world in many ways that weren't necessarily for the better. Yeah. And it's really funny, 'cause, like, now, when you talk about the future and the fact that you've got this immense concentration of power- Yeah ... and you then try to figure out what could that look like 100 years from now, and people say, "Oh, well, obviously, like, this is all just dystopian nonsense. You're not gonna have these mega corporations- Yeah ... like, ruling things." Yeah. It's like, we already had that. [laughs] We've literally come from that. That's not new. Yeah. [laughs] We've literally, literally come from that. But let's, let's, let's talk about your story in this. You know, um, I, I remember the first time your, your name came up in my world. I, I was reading something about the tech industry, and I've always been fascinated by how the tech industry has evolved. Hmm. You know? I've met many people involved in tech, founders of some of the biggest companies, founders of s- startup still- Mm-hmm ... trying to get their thing going. And there's one thing I'll say. For the, for the most part, every single one of them seemed to have, in Silicon Valley in particular, an idealistic view of the world- Mm-hmm ... and how they planned to make it a better place. Yeah. You know, they were like, "I, um, got this app, and, you know, it's gonna make accommodation better for everybody." Mm-hmm. "And I've got this app, and it's, it's gonna make getting a car easy for everybody," and, "I've got this app, and it's gonna make restaurant deliveries- Mm-hmm ... easier," and, "I've got this app, and it's gonna improve how people connect with loved ones," and, "I've got this app, and it's gonna ..." And everyone, everyone came in with this wide-eyed optimism. But I'd love to know how you- Yeah ... started in this world. Like, w- what was your original journey? How did you get into Silicon Valley? Yeah. You know, and then we'll get to the world of you, like, knowing Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, Elon Musk and all of these- Mm-hmm ... people. But, but let's start at the beginning. Yeah. How did you get in Silicon Valley?
- 4:29 – 7:37
Growing Up the Only Brown Kid in Town
- SPSpeaker
I was obsessed with changing the world from a very early age. I was a very weird kid. And part of it was just I was growing up in the UK in the '80s and '90s, and my dad was the, you know, he was a person who was a refugee as a kid. You know, he was four years old when he was a refugee during the Second World War. He'd grown up in a refugee camp in India. Wow. And he'd come to the UK in the late '50s, you know, total outsider, you know, probably a few pounds in his pocket. Um, you know, society was deeply racist. And, you know, his life was just terrible. Like, I didn't learn about it until many years later, actually, near the end of his life, you know, um, when I was 30 years old, and I was working in Silicon Valley at that point. Um, my mom, she was an immigrant from Malaysia, came to the UK in the '70s to be a nurse in Britain's National Health Service. And growing up, we had absolutely nothing. There was no money. Um, you know, I grew up mostly in the southeast of England- Mm-hmm ... uh, in this town, Tonbridge, and it was sufficiently provincial at the time that when me and my sister walked down the street, people would literally stop and stare 'cause they'd never seen people who weren't white. You know, kids would come up to you on the playground. They'd say, "Can I feel your hair, mate?" Um, I always remembered, like, kids would, would ask, "Do you speak Chinese or Japanese?" And I thought, I was born in Hammersmith. [laughs] I mean, like, how, how likely is it that I speak Chinese or Japanese? But, like, that was annoying enough for me that, like, from this very early age, I was, like, interested in, like, why we even assign these ridiculous labels- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... to people, and we make these assumptions, and they constrain our whole lives. And, like- If I had spoken Chinese or Japanese, like, so what?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Um, and so, like, I really wanted to, like, spend my life trying to figure out, like, how do you improve these systems that shape your whole life from before you're even born? Why is it some kids get these amazing lives from the beginning? Why is it that others really are struggling the whole time against the tide of history? And the logical place to start there was at the UN. So I moved to New York in, uh, 2008, and, uh, I, I got a job at the UN. Um, I'd done research on the UN for my master's. Um, I got a scholarship to go to university. Um, and, you know, I was, I was the first in my family to get a degree, so I got two of them for good measure. Thought I will just, like, absolutely, like, work really hard now to, like, you know, try and rise through the system. And, um, you know, at the UN, I realized really quickly that it's not the sort of place that actually you can change the world most days. You're just trying to get through the day.
- TNTrevor Noah
That's a, that's... You, you're not the first person I've heard say this, and it's, it's, it's... It's one of the most, um, depressing and frustrating things to hear people say-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... is that they go work at the UN. I would argue most of the people who go work at the UN are smart, idealistic, world-changing-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... people who want to see things become better.
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, so it's everything from, like, the best lawyers, the best, like, accountants, the be- like, whatever it is, they, they go, "I wanna use these talents to ha- help make the world a better place."
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
They get to the UN, and they're like, "Oh,
- 7:37 – 11:13
Why the UN Doesn't Actually Work
- TNTrevor Noah
this place doesn't seem to move anything."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
But w- but w- help me understand why. Like, w- like, what, what is happening at the UN? Or rather, what is not happening at the UN that could be or should be happening?
- SPSpeaker
I think people don't really understand how poorly resourced and how weak the UN is structurally. Like, the New York City Police Department has a budget orders of magnitude larger than the entire UN globally, and, like, that's shocking to a lot of people. The UN has hundreds of thousands of peacekeeping troops in the field worldwide. They feed millions of people globally through their aid programs.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's an organization that's supposed to be at the center of international law-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right, right
- SPSpeaker
... stopping conflict. But, like, ultimately, the UN is just a vessel for its member states. You know, it's for 100 and, you know, 90 several, you know, countries.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
These are the folks who call the shots, and it's really a very small number who really call the shots. It's the UN Security Council. It's-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right, because they have veto powers and-
- SPSpeaker
They have veto power.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You know, it's the UK, France, the US, Russia, China. And I think a lot of countries, a lot of people in the world would argue, should that be the club that gets to have a vote, you know, in-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, the deciding vote, not just a vote
- SPSpeaker
... the deciding vote-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... on all manner of things that shape the entire world and all of our lives and the course of conflicts and the fate of nations. And that's why the UN fundamentally doesn't work. It is a structure designed not to save the world. It was designed to stop us having World War III. It was designed to freeze the international system in 1945. That's, that's literally what it was for. People misread the original functioning of the organization, and I misread it. And that's why after, you know, I was at the UN for only, like, two, two and a half years, every day was deeply frustrating because I thought, "There's a problem. There's a crisis. There's a disaster."
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
"Why can't we fix these things?" And the answer was structural. It's not, uh... it's, it will never be in position to do those things probably. Um, you know-
- TNTrevor Noah
Is that, is that because fundamentally you can't have a body that is ruling over autonomous bodies? Like, I mean, you have the UN, which is a club for countries, but countries already have their own laws. They have their own rules. They have their own everything. So how do you have a club telling other people what to do? At some point, every country just goes, "No."
- SPSpeaker
I mean, throughout history, nations have agreed to compromises, to alliances-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... to international institutions that do constrain their actions in some ways when they believe it's ultimately in their national interest.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- SPSpeaker
So obviously you have things like the European Union. You have NATO. You have the oldest international organization, the International Postal Union, you know, literally the rules of how you get post delivered from one country to another.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
So, like, we have all these things, right? Air safety. Um, but, like, the UN is something that was crafted for a very narrow strand of things, and over time-
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay
- SPSpeaker
... you know-
- 11:13 – 12:53
Why He Studied Russia Before It Was Cool
- SPSpeaker
I was living in Europe. Uh, I went to do my undergrad, um, 2003.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And this was just before the European Union and NATO had expanded to the East-
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay
- SPSpeaker
... and Russia was about to become the bordering state, and I immediately had questions about that. You know, I was a teenager. I thought, "We've got the world's largest country with a very patchy track record on human rights and rule of law and democracy, and it's about to become our next-door neighbor, and surely we need to prepare to understand how to deal with that new strategic-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... challenge." And it was interesting because this was pre-Putin, you know, starting to, you know, march into other countries.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, you know, 2008 when I arrived at the UN was when-
- TNTrevor Noah
He was, he was in power by this time though, right?
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
He, he took power in 2000.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Right.
- SPSpeaker
And, you know, he was still seen as an ally of the West. You know, he would get invited to all these, you know, summits with, you know, Blair and Bush and so on.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, wow.
- SPSpeaker
And-
- TNTrevor Noah
You forget that that was a time.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And a lot of the students who were on my program at Oxford These were kids who were apologists for Putin. It was the wildest thing.
- TNTrevor Noah
What do you, what do you mean? In what way?
- SPSpeaker
You'd literally get into debates with them, and they'd say, "Oh, he's making Russia strong again, and he's a, you know, he's a great ally of the West. And, you know, anyone who, like, questions that entire thesis is just anti-Russian." And it was like, I love Russian literature. I, you know ... If you want me to, you know, talk about Russian literature and food and all of that, we can do that. But, like, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the, the fate of nations. And of course, uh, you know, we got to a moment when suddenly, um, people realized that all the things that we had sort of swept under the rug in the, uh, name of just having a, a nice cozy alliance-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... having Vlad Putin at the table in the club, all these things were utterly meaningless. There were a different set of interests at work.
- TNTrevor Noah
So
- 12:53 – 19:33
Was Russia Always the Villain
- TNTrevor Noah
h- here's something I've, I've always wondered about Russia, is like, is, is Russia acting or are they reacting? And what, what I mean by this is, you know, when you, when you look at the Cold War-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- TNTrevor Noah
... which you studied, I mean, clearly, like w- like all of this, there are parts of the Cold War where I go, "Huh, it feels like Russia is reacting to what America is doing." It feels like Russia is reacting to its perceived, like, threat, or it- it's worried about, like, bombs or not having the ... You know. And there's, there's, there's moments where, like, Russia is, like, bluffing throughout history-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... which I w- I f- I find ... Like, if it wasn't on a, on a geopolitical scale, it would be great comedy.
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- TNTrevor Noah
'Cause Russia's constantly bluffing.
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- TNTrevor Noah
"We've also got a bomb." Or, "We've got a bomb just as big as yours."
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- TNTrevor Noah
"We've got a military just as good as yours. We've got ..." And there's all these moments where they're bluffing, bluffing, bluffing-
- SPSpeaker
Yep
- TNTrevor Noah
... bluffing, bluffing. You r- you, you, you f- you find these moments where it comes to a head, and then it simmers down.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And then from the inside, Russia, Russians seem to go, like, "Yeah." When you look at it in hindsight, they go, "We actually never wanted any of that."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- TNTrevor Noah
"We never wanted the fight." You know, Gorbachev being like, "I didn't want that shit. Come on, man." W- as somebody who studied it and, you know, you've been at the UN and all of that is, h- how do you, how do you perceive Russia's reaction to the world? You know, like some people would go, "Well, Russia was always going to react to NATO being in its backyard-"
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... the same way America would react to a, another country's force being in its backyard.
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- TNTrevor Noah
How, how, how do, how do you process that, having studied it, actually?
- SPSpeaker
I mean, I think it, it's possible that a nation as complex as Russia is both being reactive, uh, and proactive, uh, both at the same time-
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm
- SPSpeaker
... and has a very divergent range of interests that might explain, you know, all the things it's done over the last couple of decades, right? I mean, there are fascinating historical debates now about were there moments in the lead up to the end of the Cold War and right after where you could have dramatically shifted-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... you know, the path that Russia eventually took. And, you know, there were moments where, you know, even after Vladimir Putin came to power, he at least rhetorically, um, you know, explored, you know, very different scenarios what, uh, a different security architecture could look like for Europe. People back in the early 2000s literally had discussions about could Russia join NATO.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Um, you know, which was something that, you know, Vladimir Putin literally, you know, he held events where he would talk about that as potentially a long range goal for Russia. But, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, scholars will debate this stuff. You know, actually at the, uh, at the dawn of the Cold War, um, there were proposals from the United States to put all the nuclear weapons in the world under the control of the UN, and it turned out that wasn't really a sincere thing. Um, that was-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, I didn't know that, actually
- SPSpeaker
... it was actually them trying to call Russia's bluff, uh, 'cause they knew Russia actually would never agree to it. They would just want to have their own arsenal, and so it was just a way to get the US to have some nice PR. Um, but, you know, it's something where I think this speaks to kind of the moment we're in, right? This actually is very relevant to some of the stuff I'm working on. Um, there was no vision really for what a post Cold War international order-
- 19:33 – 23:23
Tech in 2010 Was Still Kind of Punk
- SPSpeaker
for a lot of those companies.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Tech, tech wasn't what it is now.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Like, it was a burgeoning world of like maybe-ness. The dotcom boom still had like the effects where people were like-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... "Ah, I don't know, the bubble could burst." You know, so it, it, it was almost like punk in a way-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... tech at that time.
- SPSpeaker
That's right. I mean, it's, it's kind of wild to think back to that moment now because, of course, we only think about those Silicon Valley companies as big tech.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
That wasn't even a label.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And it was sufficiently quaint that, you know, uh, there was a film being made at Google the first time I went to Google in my career. Um, so I started at the beginning of 2011, and, uh, my buddy Jim who sat next to me, he was the PR guy assigned to manage this film which Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson were making set at Google, The Internship, or like The Intern.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And it was actually like, it was like a rom-com set at Google.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, yes. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Because you could pull off that kind of warm, fuzzy shtick, and people would go and see it 'cause it was like, oh, Google. It's this warm, fuzzy company where everyone sits on colored balls and invents the future.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, and they have the food-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... and everyone chills, and there's no real offices.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And it's just a... Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Totally. And like Steve Jobs was, you know, still alive. You know, the iPhone had just been, you know, announced 2007. So it was like very recent. You know, um, Facebook wasn't even a public company yet.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Um, you know, and after, after I was working at Google the first time, I was working for Eric Schmidt who was the executive chair, uh, chairman then. I then went to work for Zuckerberg. You know, I went over to Facebook right before the IPO, and it was a tiny, tiny company. It was less than 2,000 employees. Um, you know, it was only a few years past the point where everyone was just hurriedly adding all your friends, you know, as soon as, you know, Facebook-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah
- 23:23 – 32:34
Wait You're In That Book
- TNTrevor Noah
so when did it, when did it flip for you? I, I, it's funny, I was actually reading a book, um, maybe you even know the person. Oh, I'm gonna be so bad with this. Is it called like Careless People?
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Or is it-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
You do, you know it.
- SPSpeaker
I do know that one.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's written by a woman who used to work at Facebook.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And-
- SPSpeaker
I worked with her. Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, you worked with her?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay. Oh, this is fascinating.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] I'm in the book.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, that's wild.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, this is even-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... this is crazy for me.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Wow. Okay. So I was reading this book, and the reason I started reading it was just because I was like, all right, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in tech. I, I'll read a whole bunch of things about what's going on there, autobiographies, et cetera. But then I read this book and, uh, it was really interesting to see an account of Facebook's evolution.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, like we, we, we like to deal in absolutes in society, so we go Facebook, you know, people will be like, "It's absolutely bad."
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
Or, "No, it's absolutely good." And, and it's like when you read this book, you realize there was a time when Mark Zuckerberg- Didn't see himself as anything other than a guy who was running a tech company that was trying to connect as many people as possible in the world.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And the people who worked around him were like, "We're just trying to connect the world."
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And every time the word politics was brought up, they were like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't want to meet with presidents. We don't want to know presidents. We just make tech that connects people all over the world." I didn't know that you were there for, like, that. I- this is crazy that I'm reading the book that you were-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- 32:34 – 40:08
The Refugee Photo That Changed Everything
- SPSpeaker
Um-
- TNTrevor Noah
Which one?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, which one? So 2015 when, you know, the war in Syria was-
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay, yes
- SPSpeaker
... you know, at its-
- TNTrevor Noah
So the Syrian migration, when people-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... yeah, fleeing into Europe-
- SPSpeaker
That's right
- TNTrevor Noah
... going through Germany, et cetera.
- SPSpeaker
So you, you suddenly-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... you have this, like, rapid acceleration in the number of people being displaced.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
And you had tens of millions of people on the move. So at the time, there were about 65 million refugees in the world. And, um, it was the greatest number in history, um, biggest humanitarian disaster of all time. And my dad was really sick that year. So he had lung cancer. It was the last year of his life. Um, we knew that he only had a few months left. He had started smoking when he was about 12 years old-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, wow
- SPSpeaker
... as a child refugee. You know, that's, that's, that was the really deeply unhealthy life he had, you know, living in the refugee camp. And anyway, it finally caught up with him. He was in his late 70s. So, um, you know, I had really come to understand his story in that last year of his life 'cause he never talked about it. And I had a very bad relationship with my dad. You know, he'd, you know, had this terrible childhood. He was, like, very abusive. He was psychologically very scarred from, from his childhood.
- TNTrevor Noah
I can only imagine. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And so I'd made, I made peace with him in the last year of his life. And so I was already, like, bubbling with a bunch of feelings.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And then it was September 2015, and this photo went all over the world, and you probably would recognize it if you saw it. It was this photo of this three-year-old boy, Alan Kurdi, who was a Syrian refugee.
- TNTrevor Noah
I think so. Is it the one, if I'm not mistaken, is it in the back of the ambulance maybe? Or was it... it's like a-
- SPSpeaker
That was a different one.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, that's a different one.
- SPSpeaker
It was-
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay
- SPSpeaker
... it was the little boy who drowned-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, no, no, no
- SPSpeaker
... on the shores of Lesbos.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah.
- 40:08 – 41:55
The Algorithm Is a Choice
- SPSpeaker
Like, look at how much the algorithm on X shifted once Twitter became X under Elon, right? You'd, like, spend five seconds in there. It's just a complete cesspool-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... of the absolute worst people who've been algorithmically boosted now to dominate your feeds. So, like, absolutely, there are choices made every day in the architecture of these platforms and, like, the content they're surfacing. Like, you know, one of the things that, you know, occurred, you know, during the first Trump administration onwards was, um, you know, Facebook started experimenting with reducing the volume of news and political content in some feeds, uh, because they discovered that people were getting to the point where they were so, like, exhausted from the amount of political content-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... that they said, "Oh, you know what? This is bad for engagement. Let's just get rid of the news." And that's the thing where, hey, maybe that actually gave people some better, you know, experience in their a- maybe they spent more time. That would be how Facebook would define a better experience.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
But, like, in fact, if your society's in flames, wouldn't it be, like, more responsible to actually share these things? Like, if you had a thesis that this is the, you know, global town square. That was literally how, you know, Jack Dorsey-
- TNTrevor Noah
That's, yes
- SPSpeaker
... used to describe Twitter.
- TNTrevor Noah
That's how they sold it, yes.
- SPSpeaker
Then the global town square has to have all the conversations that matter in it, right? Not just the ones that, you know, give you the easier life when you're living, you know, in Palo Alto or San Francisco.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's fascinating because you, you realize that these guys have built a world where ... How do I ... It would be so much easier if they were just trying to be evil.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
But it seems like their evil is a byproduct of the apathy or rather the-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... appetite that they have for just getting their thing to grow as much as possible.
- 41:55 – 49:16
They Weren't Evil Just Apathetic and That's Worse
- SPSpeaker
That's right. I think that's spot on. And that, that is the complexity of this entire situation, right? If they were just cartoonishly villainous-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes
- SPSpeaker
... you know, like Zuckerberg was like, "Right, I'm gonna, like, get these people's data," and it's like, it was never like that. In a way, it's like, you know, the data's, you know, to fuel what Facebook really is, which is a big ad, you know, machine. Um, you know, his ultimate evil is to give you some crappy clickbaity ads in your feed. I mean, it's not, it's not the most, you know, you know, wild scheme ever invented.
- TNTrevor Noah
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
- SPSpeaker
But, like- The failure to engage with a whole bunch of other things which are within his power and which are playing out on the platforms, that can end up exerting tremendous evil in the world. So it's something where there's a, there's a, again, this great duality about these things, right? And you can be an engineer working at Facebook, and every day you go in there and you work on things that are really, really boring, designed to sort of incrementally improve user experience, and they do improve user, user experience, and yet you are also part of an institution that might also be doing things which in some other part of this vast global machine actually aren't effects you like at all. And you still need people to go and do the good things as well, right? Um, you know, all institutions are imperfect, and there's lots of good people, I think, who work within tech companies-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... because they, they are driven by nothing more than they want to build systems that really do solve problems for people.
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you think, do you think we got it all wrong in terms of, like, assigning a political point of view to tech leaders? I, I think of all of them, Jeff Bezos, um, like when he bought The Washington Post, people were like, "Oh man, democracy has been saved," and they came up with that slogan, "Democracy dies in darkness," and it was this whole thing, and it's like, oh, this is what we need mega titans to do is save the journalistic world that we... Mark Zuckerberg, people are like, "Oh, yes, he is a titan of free speech, and because of him, we will move this thing." You, you, you look at all of these, these figures, even Elon Musk, they're like, you know, electric cars, and here he is-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... pioneering a world that gets us away from fossil fuels, and it seemed like they were liberal bastions.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
It seemed like they were progressive icons that were trying to move society to a place that was better for everyone. And then almost overnight, it was like, well, Jeff Bezos is like, "Nope, nope. Shut that down. Move that thing. Uh, pay the people less. Get this go- I'm, I'm doing my own thing." Zuckerberg was like, "Actually, screw the news and, and we're not fact-checking anything, and we're not doing that."
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
"And, and you know what? I, I'm actually pro this. I actually think Trump's a cool guy, and I'm at the inauguration." And you see this happening.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And Elon Musk is like, you're like, "Oh, so he likes electric cars, but not necessarily... He doesn't care about the whole thing." It's, it's, it's, it's this weird, like, it's this weird gray that I think people struggle with.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- TNTrevor Noah
From the inside, did you see a shift, or do you think that there was just a big misunderstanding of who these people were from the very beginning?
- SPSpeaker
I think it was both. Um, people are desperate for heroes, and, you know, I moved to New York in 2008, you know, right on the eve of, you know, the economic crisis unfolding.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And how many more crises have we been through since then? It's like the 21st century has been a never-ending series of disasters befalling most of the world. And in that context, people will always look for heroes. Um, we're looking for good guys and bad guys. We're looking for a simplistic narrative to make sense of deeply complex events. Who were the good guys in the economic crisis?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Um, you know, there were lots of different bad guys. There were lots of different shades of gray every single day, but the real villains weren't even just these individuals, you know, we would sort of say, "Ah, that person's going to prison, right? Screw that person." There's entire systems that are rotten, and of course, this is the nature of many of the problems that are playing out now. We have deeply rotten, you know, systems that, um, you know, are behind many of the problems that are, you know, unfolding in many, many different domains. Um, so I think that was part of it, but also it was genuinely, um, you know, it was a whole bunch of very new challenges emerging in the world, which in ways these were leaders who simply weren't engaged at all. Um, there were things where, um, they might have had more constructive roles. They almost certainly would have had more constructive roles if they took those seriously. But there's lots of other leaders who should share that blame too. Um, the failure of technology in our societies is only part of a general failure of societies in the last couple of decades, which political leaders, a whole set of other, you know, thinkers and actors, they absolutely should share in that blame too.
- TNTrevor Noah
It's weird because it's, it's like we're trying to figure out where the first domino fell.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right? Some would argue there's a moment when Facebook said, "We're going to allow political people on Facebook. We're gonna allow them to run campaigns. We're gonna allow them to buy ads. We're gonna..." Some would say, "Oh, that was it. That was the domino." Other people would say, "No, it's when the lawmakers allowed Facebook to have the thing that it w- So w- where do you think the first dom- W- Like w- were there conversations within the company in and around politics and Facebook when this was still, you know, sort of burgeoning?
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, these conversations, uh, you know, have been going on for many, many years. You know, um, these were things that, you know, predated me. Um, you know, companies were already really agonizing over these things, you know, as, as social media was, you know, getting started and reaching, you know, big scale. And a lot of the thinking, right, was again driven by things that were very idealistic. Can you build a global town square-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... in which of course you want democratic discourse. You want politicians on there, and you want people exposed to their views. And these are things where, you know, political content would naturally appear because, you know, if you want to build something for free expression, then people will talk about, you know, something that is one of the central things in our, in our lives and our societies. You know, that early idealistic moment in that journey of tech, um, you know, for me was the Arab Spring. You know, I remember walking into the hall at Google when news came through that the Egyptian government had fallen. People started cheering, and it was literally like, you know, there is something in the world happening-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- 49:16 – 58:47
Then He Went to Work for Elon
- TNTrevor Noah
in 20-
- SPSpeaker
I left Facebook in 2016, but I was still in the tech industry.
- TNTrevor Noah
So you, so you-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... stayed around for a while.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I was working for Elon then when I was at SpaceX. And so-
- TNTrevor Noah
Interesting
- SPSpeaker
... I went to the space industry, which is something that should be deeply hopeful. I mean, I grew up watching Star Trek, um, you know-
- TNTrevor Noah
And many elements of it, of it have been. Like I-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... I often say this like with [laughs] with my friends all the time. I go, "Look, man, I'm not a fan of like half of the shit Elon says-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... and like his views on many things." But I'm like, you know, Starlink and the idea is pretty amazing.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, we live in a world where many people are not connected-
- SPSpeaker
Yep
- TNTrevor Noah
... to the internet, and we've seen what that can do to their financial outcomes or-
- SPSpeaker
Totally
- TNTrevor Noah
... you know. There's a young dick somewhere who's trying to-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... find another internship. You can't do it. But if you have an internet that doesn't need last mile-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... it changes your, your life. So it's fascinat- electric cars, I don't think the industry-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... would've moved if it weren't for Tesla.
- SPSpeaker
That's right.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know? So there, there's, there's many elements where it is deeply hopeful.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
But you seem to have gone from one place to another, and am I correct in saying that you are disillusioned by the entire tech industry now?
- SPSpeaker
No. Tech, this is the duality of the moment.
- 58:47 – 59:10
From Space Dreams to War Machines
- TNTrevor Noah
devastating.
- SPSpeaker
That's right. So that's the thing, right? Space and space technology could just be brilliant, and if we just looked at that, if we just had a tunnel vision, we had a navel-gazing on that-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... fantastic. But like when your boss is like out there gutting aid agencies and children are dying, like the two things are connected.
- TNTrevor Noah
So, so what do, what do you feel like your mission is now then, now that you are not in the industry? What, what are you, what are you trying to rally? What are you, what are you trying to move people
- 59:10 – 1:13:37
The AI Reckoning Nobody Is Ready For
- TNTrevor Noah
towards?
- SPSpeaker
I am very focused now on the societal implications of AI. Um, I spent the last several years, uh, you know, I was back at Google and, you know, a lot of the last 15 years have been involved in AI, and the technology and how quickly it is gathering steam, how much more advanced it's getting, how much more advanced it will be in the next decade, that is something which is going to be wildly more devastating than any of the consequences of the mismanaged technologies of the last 15 years. And the consequences will crash land on societies all over the world. We are not prepared for these things at all, economically, societally, geopolitically, environmentally, and that's the agenda that I'm really focused on. The tech industry has massively distorted the agenda for how to manage these things. We talk about AI governance.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And there's a whole bunch of stuff which is about how you manage the AI systems themselves. That's like 1% of the problem. 15 years from now, probably less than 15 years, when a lot of people have lost their jobs to AI, and we have no economic solutions, we have no idea how to give people a good quality of life, that is a much, much bigger problem than some of the technical issues we're facing with those systems. What happens when AI turbocharged industries consume wildly more resources, and they destabilize already reeling ecosystems which we know are hanging by a thread and which will impact the lives of millions if not billions of people? Um, between 2018 and 2023, the world consumed almost as much resources as one-third of the 20th century, and it's accelerating all the time. And these are, these are things where in fact, you know, big tech companies, they go to governments who are desperate for economic growth now, right? A lot of the advanced economies-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... in the Global North-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... they've got plateauing growth, they've got declining living standards. They go to them and say, "Build this wondrous technology."
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
"Build this infrastructure. We will give you back the keys to a good future." And of course, that's not happening. Um, this is something which on the present path promises to enrich a tiny sliver of societies, mostly in the United States and mostly in China. And I think the world we're gonna end up in, you know, in the next, you know, 10, 15 years is going to be much more unstable than today, with rapidly declining living standards for hundreds of millions of people. I think a lot of graduates will not be able to get, uh, good jobs at all. People who did a whole bunch of things in their lives and were told if they did these things right, they would get a good life and their kids would have better lives than them, that is not gonna happen at all on the path we're on. And so is the tech industry gonna solve these things? No. And in fact, they, they have tried to minimize debate about these things, they've tried to point people back towards the technical solutions. Now it is a moment in which societies and our leaders need to have a mainstream conversation about what the heck we're gonna do to manage all of those effects, and that cannot be left up to the tech industry.
- TNTrevor Noah
But now we're in a situation where, like you said earlier in the conversation, the world affected tech and now tech is affecting the world.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right? In the lead-up to, you know, some of the elections happening in the US, the tech giants have put together some of the most insane, like, amounts for-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... for, for, um, political campaigns. They're going after every single politician who is proposing any type of restraint or-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... constraint on, um, AI. And whether we like it or not, you know, money shapes a lot of, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... an election. So you have the tech industry fighting to define how it should be managed or it should be governed.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
And the people who are going to govern it being funded by them. It seems like a, an infinite loop that's, that's for the most part already lost unless something big breaks, as we've seen, you know, in the past. It's only when something big breaks that, that something changes dramatically.
- SPSpeaker
I mean, I, I don't think we should be under any illusions. The most likely path we're on, the one we are on right now, leads to disaster for our societies and all societies globally. I actually don't think anyone gets out of this thing. I've spent the last, you know, six months traveling the world talking to leaders and, you know, a whole bunch of people behind closed doors where you have some really, you know, spine-tingling conversations. And there's a s- there's a strain of opinion, mostly in the US and China, which thinks we can just win this, this race for AI, and-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Hmm
- SPSpeaker
... a bunch of other people will get screwed, but we'll be okay, and that's not gonna happen when of course you have societies all over the world that are gonna be in chaos. No one gets out of this thing in one piece. But, uh, we're in a moment now where I think actually a lot of people across societies, you know, who are paying a bit of attention, they're seeing things are failing on any number of fronts.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You know, you look at all the polling. Why is it the overwhelming majority of societies in almost all the world say things are generally going in the wrong direction? People are angry. They realize that, you know, there aren't new answers. There is no vision coming from the top anymore. And in that context, you then have Big Tech racing to install these systems where people are now really worried about their jobs. You know, there's a lot of polling showing that the number one thing that gets people, you know, panicked about AI, which explains why it is in fact incredibly unpopular with societies, is because they're worried about their future jobs. Um, so this is something where I think actually there's a lot of people who already are looking for a very different approach to how you manage these things. Um, the debate has not shifted there yet because I think a lot of people don't understand the scale of what might happen, the speed at which this will unfold, and how interconnected all these agendas are. When people really do understand that the technologies that might give you your amazing apps on your phone also might be things that destroy the prospects of your kids having future jobs and also will threaten, you know, natural ecosystems-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... then it becomes a very different, um, agenda.
- TNTrevor Noah
So I hear you on a, on a, on a, on a macro scale, but, like, what are we actually doing?
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 1:13:39
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Transcript of episode _8ic4siIeiM
