Looking to make your search bar cast sam harris, just a note to say that if your hearing this, you are not currently honour subscriber feed and only be here in the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe. sand harris dot, org there you'll find or private rss feed to add to your favorite pot catcher, along with other subscriber, only count We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy we're doing here, please consider becoming one today speaking with David, our back david as a writer and technologists

software engineer. He previously worked at google and microsoft after graduating, from yale university. Is right in his appeared in the times literary supplement, mit technology review, the nation and plus one tablet and elsewhere. He teaches the history of computation at the new centre for research, in practice and his most recent book- is mega nets, how digital forces beyond our roll commandeer, our daily lives and into realities, and that is the topic of today's conversation. We talk about the growth in the problems of online networks, the trade off between liberty and cooperation, the apparent impossibility of getting rid of misinformation bottom up versus top down influences recent developments in ay. I deep fakes the instability of scepticism when faced with so much misinformation

Future of social media, the weaknesses of large language models, breaking up digital bubbles, online identity and privacy and other topics, and I bring you but our back. I am here with david- our back- gave attacks. We join me thanks for having they said, so are you have written it and also timely book? That book is mega nets, how digital forces, beyond our control, commandeer our daily lives and inner realities- and I devoured this book this week and out it really speaks to our current circumstance in a comprehensive way as I age. So I want to track through your the case. You may

at four, am diagnosing our problem and offering some possible solutions. But before we jump- and perhaps you can just summarize your background- because you have a an interest in intellectual history,. straddles tech end and the humanities in a nice way, so to tell people what you been up to low these may have sort of an all over place I I I mean from a young age. I was I I really loved computers, but also but also literature. So I tried to sort of keep a foot in both, but ah the direction of the times sort of pointed me towards software engineering, and so I did end up working as a software engineer at microsoft in the round the turn of the century and then google sort of in their meteoric rise days, and I spent a little over ten years doing software engineering before deciding that it was time to. I don't know, step out and search for another perspective. Cause I'd been looking into literature and philosophy at that time, during the

time, and I wanted to see if I could do something that one can join those two sides of mrs hoff, and so I set out on writing and and bringing what I hope is a unique advantage to my opinions on technology, but also society. More generally and technology is affecting it. I and I were I wrote a tech column for for slate for some years, and I was a policy wonk in d c, which it's a great experience to have. I think that one of the in our hyper specialized world it actually is really good to have hands on experience in wildly different domains and there's nothing like attending graduate classes at the same time as working at google to make you understand what an question

someone's each culture house, yeah yeah, that's interesting was somewhat less jumpin deals jump end. I guess, starting with the title of your book, what is a mega net and how do they?

commandeer our lives on a daily basis and actually I'll, add a third question. That is why a new word, because I think every neologism needs a justification yeah. So the official definition is a megan. It is a persisting, evolving and opaque data network. That really does determine how we see the world, and it consists both of the algorithm and ai driven servers that connect up online life, as well as the hundreds of millions of people that are always connected to it. Both components are are needed because the computers act as conduits for these people to for people and the algorithms to engage in sort of a feedback loop of accelerating content, production distribution, and so it leads to these three property

It's that identify which are on velocity volume and virality, in other words, the size, the speed and the feedback that it generates, but it keeps compounding on itself and what I, what I say in the book magnets is that these systems have gotten too fast and too big to be controlled in any sort of fine grained way that if we ask a ceo or corporation to keep track of every bit of content that is published and squash out the stuff that we don't like for whatever edition of whatever definition of like you want that's a non starter. This point is just too fast. It also make you leads to inevitable viral blow. Ups and crises that happen when a certain meme or whatever takes off and by the time trying to stamp it out the horses already bolted from war and to that end

question of why a new word, my experience is a software engineer was that we really underestimated the human component. We saw the system's getting bigger, but I really feel no one foresaw just how much assigning a little bit of concern that every single user, so that they were influencing the weights and the algorithms that their data was going into the system and have a little nudge on the servers and the algorithms that influence collectively was actually a major major force that couldn't be shaped through algorithmic logical or top down means, and so I coined the term to reflect that. It requires both the human and the machine compose

it and that we ignore either of them at our peril. Because of the combination of the two that led us to where we are that machines by themselves. Could not do not create the world that we existent today, it's because we're hooked up to them constantly in this feedback loop of reacting and shaping and spreading, and forwarding that you are seeing these out of control. Behaviors take place that make these systems feel much more organic and ecological, like the whether more than you know what we think of traditionally as technological works well. What specific systems are we talking about? I think many people listen to you so far will think that what you're talking about must be limited to social networks, social media

companies lie, I guess, including things like youtube. What what are some examples of magnets? Those are the ones where I think we feel it and we observe it most directly because that's what we interact with on a daily basis, but these systems are actually present at many levels in life yeah there are, there are things are somewhat adjacent to social networks like online gaming, which has been said to be the core of, what's going to become the meadow versus the met, a verse is still a thing, but the game, suffocation of reality and online and offline life is proceeding apace. So I think that we should look at that, but also things like crypto currency networks. Were things get out of control very very quickly in some cases, by design, but also for reasons that may not immediately be clear

even to the people who are using crypto currency networks. Beyond that, we also see governments getting into this business. In the west at least the integration of government services. Identification systems has been a bit slow to happen, but in india, citizen identity has already been central rise around us single identifier called odd har, and if you look at how it is connecting up the various systems and forms of identity, you know it's not as though, in India you dont have a separate driver's license number in a separate social security number. Everything is tight around the outdoor number and that also produces these sorts of ff. back effects because more and more systems get pulled in around that identifier and start reacting to one another and is an interesting case, because I certainly qualifies as a mega net or at least a component of meg in it

and one of the things I argue, is that a lot of what we see in a high that destroys a so much is less a high technology per se and more a consequence of these mechanisms that we ve already set up and that we can see some of the things that troubles about. I all ready happening in the more out of control, but less a high influence systems. Like a recommendation engines or cryptocurrency networks, for example. So those are some of the things, but I think you could also you could extend it. You could extend it to more. I I think that in the economic realm was probably where we're going to feel the strongest. We see it the most in the socio sociological arena online, but this sort of mama happens in my opinion. Whenever you get enough people hooked up to network in such a way that you get these feedback effects is in no way restricted to social networks. I mean, if you wanna instance, that combines them look

The game stop stock stock as it was called where bunch of renders manage to send games. soaring, in the absence of any change of its fundamentals and all the, Institutional investors in Assisi were very annoyed by this, but they couldn't find that it was actually illegal because it wasn't, there were coming actual collusion going on. What was happening is that it was blowing up like a and that's the sort of thing where I say is not necessarily going to stay on social networks because it can in we can spread to the First of all to the rest of our world, I think people will have an intuitive sense what you mean by virus holiday or velocity, but can you spell out what you mean by feedback in this case, so you

If variety is my v word for feedback and by feedback, I simply mean that without you know, before you have had time to look at the result of a system, the system is already in corporatedir, the last iteration of it's state into it's next stage, in other words yeah. It's like you're, never walking into the same river twice to quote the old heraclitus its whenever you know, looking into the same algorithm, are data stream twice we can I think of algorithms as fixed things that we can. You know we can tweak or twist a gear on, but actually our interactions constantly shape those algorithms and change their ways. You're. Not if you do a search on twitter or face book or google you're not guaranteed to get the same thing a minute later than you got a minute ago. You might but you the very act of you searching his

already become a new piece of input into her into the weights of those algorithms and that's what I mean by feedback that you have these effects that are called that they cause certain that cause viral portions to amplify and get out of control before anyone has had a chance. It's not as though someone is common during this from the top down. Some people try to calendar it, but I actually think it's much harder to do than people think and that conspiratorial thinking is kind of a comfort, because you think ok. Well, all this chaos and misery. I'm experience wherever is because of it is because a facebook or microsoft wants me to be miserable, but in actuality you know having been on the inside. I don't think any of us were thrilled or expected that our algorithms would come to be so dependent on the actual interactions of user okay, so I think we're probably

and a focus on the social media component, because I think that is important but a eyes well, but there's your what you described, as you can lay out the nature of the problem and and offer some remedies theirs lay a landscape of trade off many people are becoming more and more sensitive to some of these write offs and there, in some cases, picking one extreme, a more or less sir, to these, another and every other considerations, I think in the information and and misinformation space. Many of us now perceive that there's some trade off between basic sanity and liberty, right that the freedom to just say anything at any scale, with any philosophy, with any consequences, his intention, where our ability to know what's real

at a given moment and to cooperate effectively and to maintain, in the normal, healthy bonds of aid. An intact society right to have a workable politics seems require higher, that we deal with misinformation and this information in some way, and yet these so called free speech absolute us, ten to view any attempt to deal with the basic problem of a shattered, Mr Malagigi as an orwellian overreach and and abridgment of our civil liberties and what was introduced many people who are most adamant that any attempt to deal with missing information. Disinformation is just code for an infringement of free speech in the: u s, contacts in other infringement of the first amendment, many these people are a heavy, have a varied

for, in view of the the right to assembly, which is also enshrined in the first amendment, so that these are the summits in people. I won't name them here, but they will hear themselves referred to. Ot have been very focused on. I in particular, like the the the the dysfunction in a city like san francis go with the other, nor the homelessness in need. the mental illness, being played out on the sidewalks in the open air drug markets they ve been, very concerned that we admit that it is an unacceptable naked externality to have people defecating sidewalks and we can't let you can't tolerate this awful status quo under the age of This is just freedom of assembly. You know the the the everyone has a right to congregate on the sidewalk. Are you going to bridge that right? What are you stolen, but these same people will not address the quite similar concerns about a digital sewer that we're now all living in

and having to swim through any of the digital anarchy that results when we can have a conversation, verges on basic facts about anything whether to pandemic or whether an election was run appropriately, etc. So obey the start with this trade off or perceived trade off.

Between understanding our world and being able to speak to one another about consequential issues and the freedom to say anything at any scale. It's interesting because I think a lot of as it is affected by the issue of volume that we live in this world now informational abundance and that's very different. We use live in a world of informational scarcity where there is actually selection pressure and there had to ultimately be only a couple of views that won the day. I dont think thats really true. Any more, I think that- and I think you see this- that those efforts to stamp out misinformation that that some people have

and has problems with they aren't all that effective that you see these, you see these factions persist, no matter what you do to them, and people complained bitterly. But the weird thing is: is that you know they don't they don't seem to have been stamped out all that much except in extremely virulent and perhaps blatantly illegal cases for all facebook gets criticized for censoring stuff or not censoring stuff? I can find pretty I'll stuff very easily on it. So I think that what we are actually seeing right now is not even much in the way of censorship, so much as just high it from view and that the refreshment in the like in the tension you describe is going to come from people. Just pretending that stuff doesn't exist. The bad stuff doesn't exist

which obviously the traditional way we ve all with isn't at. That problem seems to be less with the whip with these points of view existing than, plus being reminded of them and having them. She shoved in our face, what was that one point you make various points in the book? Is that companies, move, say facebook or youtube twitter as examples have much less control them and their users imagine reiser that mark Zuckerberg can't actually stamp out misinformation, even if he wanted to and even if hours, even if he could accurately target misinformed as misinformation, not It is one errors of propagating misinformation in the process. Even and an omniscient zuckerberg can't actually affect the censorship change. He might want to effect the only course

brain mechanisms available. You know in the run up to the two thousand and twenty election, they did ban all political advertising that can be done but to ban only misinformation while that's relative. Well, it's a! U have to get people to agree on what misinformation is. That's tricky enough already b, you need to somehow algorithmic. We determine whether something is misinformation or not, and that swarms

and you're never going to do to enough of a degree that you're going to stamp it out because yeah you know becomes like fighting censorship. China has effectively been trying to do this for for decades and with only mixed success. They really do have an army of government censors online and still stuff gets through nonstop. So, and yet we don't even want to, I hope, a lot of people would would at least agree. We don't want to get to china's level even well. I think we can also say that pure anarchy and and pure hyper libertarianism creates an environment that almost nobody wants to exist in. Yet I think for me it at at you know it could be mistaken about this, but the distinction that has seemed relevant up until this point is has been encapsulated by somebody's phrase. I forget who coined this but to say that freedom of speech is not freedom of reach right.

is to say that there is a distinction between the political freedom to say whatever you want, whenever we want, which is enshrined in the first amendment, with some specific exceptions and which I'm totally happy to defend, the people should be thrown in prison for saying things we don't like any, even and in most cases saying things that are untrue, but being well the freely speak and write and publish an ordinary channels is not the same thing as being free to have your speech algorithmically boosted, because we have built a machine that preferentially amplifies misinformation and disinformation and outrage, and you know omen. This comes back to the original sin or what many people consider to be the original sin of the

internet, which is the the ad based attention gaming business model creatively. If you break that link between the freedom to say anything and the machinery of amplification That has been there the bright line that many of us have been trying to focus on, but it is, do you agree matters more complicated and that I think it is more complicated than I mean, I think, if you're totally right, but I also think that the machine if amplification is changing in ways that we've only begun to grasp that you know after the twentieth and twentieth century of top down general, you know broadcast media where the overall shape of the narrative but if there are disagreements within it was set by a small number of elite players were now seeing that that no longer the case

and actually have a bottom up generation of a narrative, because you see narratives that well well, they may benefit one political party or another are definitely not created by that political party, because they can a certain liabilities with alone I should name them or not, but I think you can know what I'm talking about here, and it is because of that back loops, that you no longer need some sort of shepherd or demagogue to start. And a start, jenny rating an entire narrative landscape. That then reinforces itself because you ve got. You know you ve got these magnets. What are bringing people like minded people together, and just having them say, yeah you're right, and what about this and building up a corpse sort of more or whatever independent of of inner. What we think of as traditional

the social and societal elder influences, and so you know what is amplification having been associated. Having had served, time, and I guess vaguely traditional all media new media elite circles, their powers dissipating there, definitely have less power than they used to, and I think that, no matter where you are in the spectrum, you tend to think that other people have more power to amplify than you do, because I think everybody is seeing their property trees are no one feel that they have enough, so that if you say, see the new york times dissing your point of view. You take that as a societal disapproval even loony or times

along the paper of record in the way that it was fifty years ago. So I think, there's there's difficulty even assessing what amplification is in, whose getting amplified that we dont generate. We couldn't generate and hurried elefante just died. He was before Michael Jackson, he was everybody own calypso has calypso record. I know I don't think we have the mass media machinery to generate that sort of unity any more, because there's no selection pressure, they it's not that one one point geller product or narrowed and has to win everybody. Can he as an interesting point because its it pre internet? If you are going to start something like he went on or some other cult of conspiracy is mud had to have been much harder to do is not that it was impossible, but im a uterus would have to be you

if the physically congregate with people in order to you'd have to have a q and on conference and then you'd be meeting people in the flesh and seeing all of the these are the visual and and palpable evidence of their crackpot, agnes, presumably right and right. You say you set at idea so yeah I was q, and on that I was talking about exactly like the cuban on his certainly brought some benefit the republican party, but Do I in any way think then that the traditional republican elite decided that they want she went on to be a thing? No, I think they would have shaped very differently hadn't. It had the option because it carries with it. Some severe liability is that they have to deal with. Also, maybe we should talk it well. What was bringing the I peace before we talk about remedies here like almost everyone, her brow, ugly. Everyone who wrote a book that talk about a sigh and published it done anything.

I'm earlier than than last week. I would imagine some of what you say about, large language models and deep learning might feel a little. Is there anything you would you would want to modify now? Given the what's happened, she pitiful I made you mentioned jpg three in the book, so your ear of sort of up to the minute there, but I think you were very sceptical of the ability of these large language models to process speech effectively and mayors. Are they going to be more power? for them, then you expected or or I want. What are your thoughts about the moment. Honestly, I stand by what I said a hundred percent. I think that they have the same the same feelings. They are the acquittal of the old horse, clever hans. That was very good at being queued by people and research,

funding in convincing ways, but couldn't do actually do math. My plea is that these large language models are incredible and their incredible at producing content, which I do say in the book, but they are bad at, is actually behaving with. Genuine understanding because they don't have it. So I actually think that I've been, I think, think held up. Prima will defended at length and some of the weirdness that were seeing also the fact that these areas are clearly behaving in ways that weren't intend by their creators when that new york times author gut, freak down by the microsoft sidney chow. Money laundering jealous no yeah yeah yeah. Well, if you look back at it, you can see that he was queuing yeah, I had someone say: oh I'd, feel so much better. If it wrote about world peace- and I said I can get it to talk about world peace, talking about sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, and why

was it so uncanny? It's because it's been seated, it's been trained on all the collective conscious and unconscious writings of humanity, so that when we set out what would it horrible eight? What would you do if you are hobble ay? I it parity back the exact mode common nightmares that humans have and then, as we write a bunch of stories about it, that feeds back into the next iteration these chap and it feeds them back to us So, no, I think that the the elo ems are pretty much about where I expect them to be, and I do not see them getting past that to a point of achieving what could be called reasoning or true cognition any time soon, even though they will be able to do other things that are very amazing and very world changing. Would he think the the net result of these. Some language models will be punished

or the nine or benefit Sure, in the near a term may I come Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the the near term effects? Amid a little sleeve asia. I- and singularity reason and other concerns aside. Just gimme this your sense of the next six to twelve months with respect to the kind the problems we ve been talking about with megan. As what what will I do to help her hurt the situation? I actually think that in the next year, or so things will not change that much because it's going to take some time to start deploying these a eyes in an increasing number of contacts. So in the very short term, I think it will continue to be a novelty and people tear their hair out. But it's going to take a couple more years before you start seeing deployed to to generate content to help people generate content,

to work in collaboration with humans, which is, I think, where you will see a big difference that if you have a human, assisting, an alias human provides. The actual reason in the eye provides the frosty, as it were, that you're going to see moreover, you're going to see increasing cases where, even if this thing doesn't actually, even if these things don't actually think, people will believe that they think that's where that's, where you're going to see the biggest changes on the human side. And again I get back to my thet my theme that the human aspect of this is just as important as the machine aspect of it that, in some ways of creating machine that convinces p bull that its thinking is, if not as much of an achievement, is certainly as big a deal as if you created a machine that actually does thing and I goes back to her- you know eliza, which in the sixties was tricking people into thinking that it was an actual therapists, the cared about their feelings. While this is the supercharged version of it goes much better than,

eyes, but it's not new. For these. You know turing test the supposedly be passed Actually, if you really want it to be passed, there was that company. I think that was marketing in a virtual girlfriends and boy friends as chap arts and people were got really upset when a shut off the romantic language. I don't know, did you about the liver, get the company's name are about those who have her at the company yeah. That may again may take another twelve months, but you're going to start seeing as their pay their the human desire for company for pets. It's like tam, o god, cheese that that's going to man. The itself and the more that weaken embody them in one way or another, the better it will be so Even though, even though you be able to have a conversation with them that feels convincingly human, at least not if you're looking at it skeptical it out, you can still have something that behaves on the order of say a pet and, if its human enough, maybe it's maybe you can feel romantically.

Towards it, but though, what you'll also asian? What was the oceans seed? Doubt massive downward pressure on content creation that increasing We are already seeing content farm being generated, but it's going to get much easier to generate astroturf or whatever in huge amounts and at the point we can start generating new articles brace on press releases. There will the what's already been towered pressure on content generation will get even lower And mental spread to video as a generation of of a video and sound gets better as well. Are you expecting this? am. If of everything worked at a certain point. Most of the content on the internet will be a I generated, whether its tax for video or audio and then we'll have. This persist problem with not knowing what it is, in fact real and when you won't, you won't know whether an image is real. You won't know other videos real. You we'll be reading news articles that you're pretty sure. written by?

I absolutely I mean to some extent, that's already true on twitter that he is not a lot of tweets. You can't quite tell and you're just going to see that that phenomenon grow and grow, that in in in ten years' time, there's not going to be it's not going to be easy to determine whether a video on site is real or manual, accurate, and that gets back to what I think you said about judging reality, and I think that what's going to happen is people are going to have different versions of reality, because with so much abundance of information out there, you fine stuff to support your version of reality, If you want a reality in which you know it's true, it's going to become easier and easier to just shore up so what do you imagine? The effect will be- and I I imagine many of us will just declare something like epistemological bankruptcy. With respect to the internet

and want to read old books more the time nor do I had had you may imagine we deal with a with an absolute soon army of fake. and half faker, your otherwise unreliable information Well, you know where a lot of people believed that there were wmd as in iraq for quite a while, so people can hold on to their their their beliefs quite rigorously, especially if they're in a community of people who agree on them. If it's just you in isolation, I totally can agree declaring him an intellectual bankruptcy, but skepticism is hard to maintain, as it takes a lot of effort- and I say this as someone who's predisposed towards admits that the comfort of being around people who think the way that you do- and you know when I was honestly- I probably saw a lot of this in academia because

as an academia? Is it because it's a shrinking environment? Academics are very much in competition with each other, and so the the sort of enforcement of a certain purity and hot house removal from the world has gotten larger and larger, but that doesn't make people as long as there's an incentive for them to keep believing what they're believing will do it, and as long as you're getting social approval for believing those things I figured, you probably will stay on line. What I do think will happen. Is that these I call them narrative bunkers. You can get there, it's beyond filter bubbles, because it's not just you only see it it. It's that you are actually in a community of people who are actually reinforcing certain assumptions about the world. You can have disagreements about it, but the assumptions are the same way in the same way that if you want you know if you watch say on fox news for a week, even if you disagree with everything

you see, you will start to take their narrative frame into into account and that's what going to happen. You're going to see this divergence and factional as asian of narrative frames, and increasingly you only meal understand what people in other narrative frames are are saying. I think I feel like this already happens to somebody that you see people in you and in front of the bay area taxing compared to people. Insight in new york media scene, or you know, people who complain about san francisco becoming a living hell hole. Nerf. Take your pick that all all these people are working with such assumptions about things they've never seen, and perhaps this is always the case to a point, but it's only growing stronger. I was in seattle a few weeks ago- and I was talking to a couple people about the number one- there were like the seattle protests and finally, they form that much anonymous zone and

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